The Millionaire's Daughter
by elleindie
Summary: When Lana Lang moves to Smallville, she finds herself caught up in her father's business deals with partner Lex Luthor, choosing between love and honesty, & solving Clark Kent's mystery. Can she survive a world where knowing too much can cost one's life?
1. Chapter 1

**Summary.  
**Lana Lang is the daughter of a wealthy business man. She's also just been uprooted from her life in Metropolis and dropped, haphazardly, into the completely unfamiliar world of Smallville. Though she welcomes the change, she must find a way to fit in with the less-privileged side of civilization. And then there's the handsome, intriguingly perfect boy who lives just down the road. What happens when her feelings for Clark interfere with not only her relationship with doting boyfriend Jason, but also her father's business deals? And can Lana survive in a world where knowing to much could equal one's life?

-- -- --

**The Millionaire's Daughter  
**by The Volvo.

It was small. And quaint. And from the six or seven blocks she'd seen of it so far, it was boring. But for a town of little over two thousand and with a name of Smallville, she held little hopes for it. So far, it was living up to her expectations.

And her father had described the manor as "huge, with a bathroom for every bedroom," so she held her breath. Supposedly, some mad, filthy rich old scientist had lived there, filling it with odds and ends and strange artifacts no one would want. Lana imagined statues of cats and cows and whatever else a raving old man from a hick town could get his hands on.

But that could – and would – all be taken care of. No cats. No cows. No statues. Just a home, which was more than Lana had ever had. Only mansions or estates. Never a home, not even when her mother had been alive. Lana wanted a home, not just a place to sleep and eat at.

Their chauffeured car pulled down a long cement lane; the gates on either side of the entrance had a curly S wrought into the iron. Lewis, on the seat beside her, grimaced and muttered something about changing them. Lana simply sighed and gazed out at the new place.

The grass was abnormally green, definitely watered on a regular basis. Even as she watched, timed sprinklers rose from the ground like little soldiers and began spouting water across the lawn. There was a great cement circle drive up ahead that curved around an extravagant fountain, the base of which was carved with monuments to Zeus, Hera, and Hercules; around the circle drive were plants and flowers and trees of varieties she'd never seen and some she had—roses, lilies, orchids, dogwoods and fruit trees. Every single one of them pruned and watered daily.

And then there was the house. Or castle, more accurately termed. It was made of a dull gray stone with black accents at every corner; the windows were high and stained red and purple, the large double doors a dark, shiny wood. Lana inwardly groaned. She could already imagine it: cold hardwood, silent, stainless steel, and dust. Inches upon inches of dust. And statues of cats.

The long car had rolled to a halt under a huge permanent awning and she could see, through the dark tinted glass, the driver rounding the front fender, on his way to open her door. Before he could, she pulled the lever herself and pushed the door away, swinging her long, tan legs over the seat and planting her heeled sandals on the concrete below. She adjusted the skirt of her sundress so that it was covering her thighs, but it still barely came to her knees; the golden skin there glowed in the tiny bit of sun that caught it before she stood up and stepped further into the shade. She folded her unneeded sunglasses in her hand and turned to face her father, who was surveying the property.

"Needs some work," he muttered, looking at the fountain (which Lana now noticed was old and crumbling in places) and the gates at the end of the drive. She rolled her eyes and walked past the driver, who was now holding the huge mahogany door open for her.

Her breath caught in her throat; despite being large, open, and nearly empty, she'd been entirely wrong about the interior of this behemoth. It was beautiful, with striking ancient artifacts placed in strategic places, accented with huge vases of white lilies – and everything was _clean._ There wasn't a bit of dust anywhere. She knew a group of maids had been cleaning it feverously over the past day or two, but she was still amazed that such an old castle could be so _sparkling._

Lewis followed close behind, and after that the driver brought in their bags. He turned to Lana, two of her suitcases tucked neatly under his arms and one in each hand. "Which room will be yours, Miss Lang?"

She frowned, and then looked towards the staircase, where rooms lay unexplored. She turned to him, and smiled.

"It's alright, Tobias. I'll take them myself once I find a room to my liking."

He nodded quickly and placed her bags neatly in a corner near the staircase; Lewis grimaced at her.

"He could have taken them, Lana."

"But I didn't want him to."

He sighed and shook his head as Tobias returned with half of his bags; Lewis pointed up the staircase and Tobias took off, juggling the bags easily as he climbed. Lana took one last look around and moved to follow him, but stopped when Lewis called her back.

"We'll be eating in the dining hall at five, Lana."

She turned, her expression contemplative. "If I'm hungry I'll be down."

He stared sternly at her. "Five o'clock, sharp," and he turned down the opposite hallway, disappearing from sight.

When she reached the top of the stairs, she couldn't decide which way to turn; there was a hall to her left, one to her right, and one leading straight ahead and towards yet another staircase. She closed her eyes and turned left, beginning her venture into the old Swann manor.

-- -- --

Chloe nearly bounced up and down on the passenger seat as she attempted to peer past the hedges and the iron gates. She craned her neck, her eyes wide, and bit her lip as she tried to catch a glimpse of the new inhabitants of the old manor on the outskirts of Smallville. So far all either one of them had seen was a long black limo, and Clark refused to peer through the walls to see who or how many were calling the castle home.

He rolled his eyes. "They aren't celebrities, Chloe; stop acting all paparazzo."

Chloe turned on him, grinning. "If they bought the Swann mansion, then they have to be _something, _Clark. No one can just buy a multi-million dollar mansion and move in on a whim. That takes a piggybank the size of Alaska."

"Yeah, they're rich. Can we go now?"

"You can't tell me you aren't the least bit interested in your new neighborhood millionaires."

Clark chuckled. "Quite frankly, I can," he said, and he stepped on the gas, causing the old truck to surge forward. "And put on your seatbelt," he sniggered, as Chloe straightened herself from bracing her body against the dash.

"Thanks for the warning," she muttered darkly, and pulled the belt over her shoulder.

Clark grinned at the windshield and continued down the road, back towards the farm. "So, are you and Pete going to that party down at the gorge tonight?"

Chloe raised her eyebrows and turned in her seat, adjusting the seatbelt so it was under her arm rather then rubbing against her neck. "Yeah. Why?"

"Nothing, just . . . be careful."

Chloe rolled her eyes and giggled. "It's alright, Clark; I don't like Schnapps and Pete can't hold liquor _or_ lie worth a crap, so we'll both be sober-cabs tonight."

Clark furrowed his eyebrows. He knew Chloe and Pete wouldn't get drunk at a party they had to drive home from, but he still didn't like the idea of them going to a drinking party, period. Too many chances for trouble. Too many chances that someone would get stupid.

"Just tell me that you'll leave at the first sign of trouble," he side, casting her a sidelong glance. She sighed, and nodded, putting her hands up.

"Yes, officer. No booze, no bad stuff, no fun." She grinned at him. "The first sign of trouble, and we're both out like those flannel shirts you wear."

He made a face at her as they pulled to a stop in front of the barn. Chloe gathered all her "journalistic necessities" off the seat beside her – namely a notebook, a pen, a laptop, a pack of double-stuff Oreos, a six-pack of Mountain Dew and two vanilla Frappiccinos – and hopped out of the truck; on the opposite side, Clark stepped down lithely and rounded the fender.

"My shirts are comfortable," he said, pouting slightly as they stepped into the barn. It was nice enough outside that they were going to work in the loft, rather than stay cooped up in the living room.

"I bet," Chloe said, smirking. "That'd explain why you've been wearing them for seven years straight. Who introduced you to flannel, anyways?"

"My dad."

"He should be shot for that – no offense."

Clark laughed and followed Chloe up the stairs before plopping down on the couch beside her. She set up her laptop and organized the treats around them; she helped herself to a Dew and cracked open the Oreos.

"So, we start from the beginning." She turned to Clark. "What's the beginning?"

Clark grimaced, and snatched a cookie form the package. "Can't we make stuff up? With your writing and my over-active imagination we could create a bestseller."

Chloe grinned, and shook her head. "Nice try. Just . . . start with freshman year. What do you remember most?"

Ever since their honors-writing class had been given the task to write an "extrememly detailed and vivid account" of a memorable time in their lives, spanning at least two years, Clark had been dreading doing it. His life already sounded like fiction. But writing it down on paper and handing it in for a grade wasn't acceptable, and although his teacher would definitely give him an A, she'd probably make sure he was being properly medicated.

"I remember. . . being forced, roped, and tortured into writing the lunch menu for the Torch."

Chloe tossed an Oreo at his flashing smile and he caught it in his mouth.

"No, seriously," he began again. "I remember the identity crisis everyone goes through." He glanced hopelessly at her.

"Okay, identity crisis, check. Everyone is doing the identity crisis thing. At least try to be original, Clark, or you're wasting my time."

He sighed and leaned into the cushions. "Then you come up with something. You were there for all of it."

She raised her eyebrows. "Not _all_ of it, but I'll let that slide." She turned back to her computer and began typing up an outline. "Now, as we can't include the Loeb Bridge incident, the freak-lightning strikes, the defeat of the bee-queen, or any abnormally alien material, we'll start with . . . hmm. Your life really _is_ boring when you get past all the super-powered stuff."

Clark rolled his eyes and commandeered the laptop. "My Incredibly Boring Life As The Farmer's Son," he said as he pounded out each word. "There. Now help me make farming sound intriguing."

"Yes, sir," she said with a grin, as she began to punch out words on the keys. Clark reached for a soda and leaned back again, watching as Chloe quickly and efficiently typed one long paragraph of outlining. His thoughts wondered as he guzzled the citrus drink; he was finding that, now they had left, he was swept back in that day on Loeb Bridge . . .

_It was cool; not too cold, since it was still September, but cool enough that the tawny jacket he was wearing didn't seem suspicious to anyone else. Of course, he didn't need it. It was all a guise, to try and blend in more. After all, that's what everyone was after, wasn't it? Trying to fit in?_

_Clark just had a harder time of it._

_He was leaning over the railing on the bridge, watching the calm water of the river below. It was odd, how nature always had a balance; Clark's mind couldn't keep still, switching from thought to worry to concern . . . and yet everything around him was clear, calm, and easy-going._

_Except the massive truck rumbling his way._

_Clark turned in the nick of time; the huge carrier truck blew a wheel, causing it to swerve and squeal right towards him. He barely had time to put his hands up and protect himself before the truck had hit him with bone-shattering force and sent them both flying over the edge and into the cold water below._

_After that his adrenaline took over; he couldn't clearly remember anything until he was sitting on the shore of the river, wrapped in a blanket, emergency crews swarming around him and the driver of the truck, who sported a gash across his left cheek and wide eyes._

"_I hit you," he said, staring at Clark. Clark shook his head._

"_What?"_

"_Didn't I hit you?" The driver looked back towards the truck, the rear end of which was just barely poking up out of the water. "Hit you at sixty per hour."_

"_No, sir, you must be mistaken." Clark's mind worked at incredible speeds, just like his legs. "You missed me and I jumped in and pulled you from the truck . . ."_

"There." Chloe pushed the laptop towards him. "All done."

Clark blinked and looked down at the screen. There, formatted neatly and easy to read, was his entire paper planned out, broken down by paragraphs.

"How can I ever thank you enough, Chlo," he said, sitting up and setting his can aside. She giggled.

"The word 'carpooling' comes to mind, and I don't mean in that old Dodge."

"Right, Chloe," he said, saving the outline and shutting down the computer. "I'll give you a piggyback ride the next time we're looking to expose my secret. How does Wednesday work for you?"

"Perfect!"

Clark shook his head and neatly piled all the supplies together. "When is Pete picking you up?"

"Five. So until then, I challenge you to slap-jack." She pulled a deck of cards out of her purse and waved them around. "Aces and deuces wild, three's are black holes, and," she said, grinning, "no super-powers."

Clark cocked an eyebrow. "I don't need super-powers to beat you at cards, Chlo."

"Them's fightin' words, Kent."

-- -- --

Six hundred and forty-seven stairs later and Lana had finally lugged her last bag up to her newly chosen bedroom. She closed the door behind her and panted slightly, looking around the wide, open room with the clear-glassed window on the west wall and a fireplace on the west. She'd seen enough stain-glassed during her ventures that she'd almost grown tired of the way the light shining through them turned the rooms red and purple that the last thing she wanted was to wake up every morning to it. So she found one of the very few rooms without and set up camp. Her bags were sitting beside the huge bed, waiting to be unpacked. She slipped off her heels and opened the first one.

Once she had slipped into a pair of snug-fitting jeans and a vintage Rolling Stones tee, she beginning truly unpacking; in one bag were sheets and pillowcases; she could do without a duvet for now, as there was a fluffy white down blanket on the bed already, which smelled like gardenias. She inhaled this scent as she made the bed up with deep purple sheets; it reminded her of her mother.

As she was arranging framed photographs on the mantle of the fireplace, her phone, which lay on the bed next to a half-empty suitcase, began to buzz quietly. She crossed in half a second and answered it quickly, barely glancing at the caller ID. "Hello?" she said, her voice louder than usual.

"Lana!"

She sighed, and smiled. "Yeah. I'm so sorry . . . I couldn't answer my phone in front of Dad unless I wanted it taken away. You know how he is . . . _it's not polite to use phones in public_."

"I've always said your dad was uptight, Lana."

"Yeah, whenever you weren't sucking up to him and trying to get that scholarship." She giggled. "I miss you."

The deep voice on the other end hummed in agreement. "Less than I've missed you, I guarantee. I could always come and sweep you away, back to Metropolis."

"Jason, Dad would absolutely murder you."

"But I'd still look cute either way." She could hear his grin.

"Eh . . . the blood could be a real turn off."

She plopped down onto her bed, toying with a corner of the duvet. "So how is the cow town?" he asked. She shrugged, looking into the pit of the empty fireplace.

"I've seen seventeen cows, three bulls, four squirrels, a duck, and nothing has compared to you." She sighed. "Then again, I haven't sampled the local fare . . . I hear farmers' sons are usually brawny… tan… and gorgeous."

"Well, didn't I tell you my ancestors were farmers?"

Lana laughed, then frowned. "This is going to be hard."

"I know."

Lana felt the wave of tears swelling up. "You know I—"

"Love me? Yeah. I do. I also know that if it were your choice you'd run away and come back and live with me. If you'd had any say in the matter, you never would have left in the first place."

"You know me so well."

He sighed, then chuckled. "Lana, I have to go. Father's calling a meeting for everyone to meet the new associate," he said. "You know, lawyers and their meetings."

"Grown-up stuff."

"Exactly. Love you."

"You, too," she said, and pushed the end button before wiping away the stray tear on her cheek. She stood up, tossing her phone back down onto the bed, and looked back at the mantle.

Pictures of friends at junior prom, candids of her and Amy, her best friend from Excelsior. And photo upon photo of Jason, his arms wrapped around Lana's waist, his smile matching hers in both brightness and happiness.

It didn't even feel like he was older anymore, although she was still in high school and he was in his third year of college and starting at his father's law firm. But the age difference hadn't ever mattered; they were simply numbers.

Her father didn't mind the difference anymore, not after finding out that Jason's father was none other than the inheritor of the Teague fortune, one that amassed several billion dollars and two large estates—not to mention he was lawyer to the high-paying cases and had never lost one yet. That alone allowed Lewis Lang to respect them. He could care less if Jason was four years older. He had more money, too.

She glanced at the clock. 4:45, and she had nowhere near the appetite she'd need to sit through dinner with her father tonight.

-- -- --

"You hit that three!"

"I did not, you know it."

"Clark, I watched you with my own eyes! You hit that three—you hit a black hole!" She smiled smugly and held out her hand. "Hand over the cards, shooter."

Clark sighed—no point in arguing with Chloe when she had three Mountain Dews and ten Oreos in her. He tossed the cards down and she scooped them up, stacking them neatly and adding them to her hand. She quickly counted them, then summed up the dismal stack still left to turn over. It was obvious she would win. There was no way around it now.

"Say it."

Clark grinned and shook his head. "Nope." His lips popped loudly on the "p".

"Say it!"

"Say what, exactly?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Kent! Say, 'Clark Kent wears ladies' hosiery!'"

Clark giggled. "Who says 'hosiery' anymore?"

"Your mom! Now say it!"

"Clark Kent . . . wears ladies' hosiery." When Chloe grinned in victory, he added, "And loves every minute of it."

Chloe pumped her fist for effect and glanced down at her phone. "Damn, Pete's gonna be here any minute." She gathered her bag and her "necessities" and stood up. "Good beating you, Kent. I'll be waiting for my piggyback ride on Wednesday," she said, winking as she crossed to the steps. He waved her off and swept up the cookie crumbs from the top of his trunk.

"Oh, and find out if you can get any dirt on the new mystery neighbors!" Chloe's voice floated through the open loft window.

"Okay, stalker," he called back down to her. He heard her laugh as the sound of Pete's car rumbled up the lane.

"Hey Clark!" Pete yelled. Clark stepped over to the window and waved hello and goodbye before Chloe climbed into the passenger seat and they sped off towards town.

He sat back down on the couch, almost wishing they had invited him. He had nothing to do; his mom and dad were in the house and, as much as he loved them, they weren't exactly big on just having fun. Usually hanging out included deep discussion with them, and they weren't exactly against having the same discussion twice.

So he was stuck in his loft, with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs. Or write his paper. Chloe's laptop sat feet away on the trunk, left behind so he could use it.

Or he could welcome the new family to town. Which didn't sound like such a bad idea; it was a very Kent thing to do, and if his mom didn't object, he could take one of the freshly baked pies she'd prepared for the Talon's bakery.

He didn't have anything else to do, anyways.

-- -- --

**Disclaimer.  
**I do not own Smallville, Clark Kent, Lana Lang, Chloe Sullivan, or any other recognizable characters. I do own, however, a life-size cardboard stand-up of Edward Cullen (trufax). I intend to attain a life-size cardboard stand-up of Tom Welling, as well, but I'm afraid he's too tall for my low-ceilinged bedroom. =) I mean, the boy's six-foot-five, for chrissakes.

**Author's Note.  
**Um, I don't really have anything note-worthy to put here, but then again I never really do. Ha. I'm lazy and unimportant, just say it.

Oh, I guess I could say that I have seven or so chapters of this written, so me falling extremely behind in updating isn't too much of a worry, but it's still possible. Today is the first time I've written on it in about three months, so. . . yeah. But I'm getting mroe motivated to finish my stories. That was one of my New Year's Resolutions. ;)

Enjoy, peeps. And please, please please please, revieeeeeew. Thankya! Next chapter up soon, keep an eye out.


	2. Chapter 2

Armed with two pies—Martha Kent liked to be accommodating—and wearing his best blue tee shirt, as Chloe had already assaulted his flannel, Clark was now barreling down the road back towards the Swann mansion. _What are you supposed to wear when welcoming the new millionaires to town?_ Maybe his down-home country-boy charm would get him past the gates.

Luckily, the gates were already open, so he didn't have to buzz; he still felt apprehensive about driving up the lane while the castle loomed ahead. He'd been here before, sure—but that was when Dr. Swann still lived here, and he'd been invited. Now he felt like he was waltzing into unfamiliar territory. What if they shot him down with an enemy missile?

He put the Dodge in park and climbed out, reaching back to grab the pies off the seat. When he straightened up, he was intimidated by the long stretch limo he'd parked behind—the same one he and Chloe had spotted earlier. He stepped between it and the truck, reaching the front door and hitting the doorbell expertly with both pies balanced on one arm—one rested on his forearm, where it teetered back and forth ever so slightly.

When the mahogany door swung open, a man in an expensive black suit was standing there, his expression polite but unsmiling.

"May I help you, Mr.…?"

"Clark Kent," he said, sticking his hand out in front of him. "I saw you just moved in and wanted to welcome—"

"One moment, please."

Clark was staring at the shiny, polished wood of the door, as it swung shut in his face, his hand at his side and the pies on the other arm tottering more precariously. He nodded once and turned on his heel, headed back towards his truck and home. _Enemy missile number one._

"Mr. Kent?"

He spun, catching the apple pie just as it began to fall, managing to keep both upright. The man in black was at the door again, and by his side was a tall, scrawny man with dark hair and dark eyes. The second man was wearing khakis and a white button down, and an expression that told Clark he had gobs of money. Maybe enough to buy a mansion and move in on a whim?

Clark retraced his steps and looked between them both, his cheeks glowing warm but not yet flushed. The khaki man said, "Thank you, Arthur," and the other was dismissed, disappearing into the dark, cool depths of the manor. Clark watched him go but was distracted by Khaki Man.

"Clark, is it?" The man was appraising his tee shirt. Clark nodded.

"I saw you just moved in," he said again, holding the pies like a peace offering. The man looked down at them and grinned.

"People told me this town was friendly," he said, chuckling lightly. "But pies go beyond anything I imagined."

Clark nodded, glad that the man hadn't kicked him off the doorstep. "Freshly baked. My mom's apple pies are the best in the county." Smile.

The man shook his head disbelievingly and stepped aside. "Come in, Clark. You've interrupted my dinner but for the 'best pies in the county' I think I'll let it slide."

Clark grinned and stepped into the cool shade of the entry hall; looking around everything was as he'd remembered it, save for the lilies placed on the entry tables. In their place he remembered a glass case with a perfectly constructed model of a far away planet no one had heard of . . .

"This way, Clark."

The man led him into a dining room down the hall, where a long dark table was set with two plates—one empty, the other with a half-eaten porterhouse steak and roast potatoes. He glanced at the expensive bottle of Dom Perignon before setting the pies on the table and turning back to the man, who shook his head apologetically.

"I'm sorry, Clark, how rude . . . I'm Lewis Lang. My daughter and I just moved in today."

Clark looked up. "Daughter?"

"Yes, um . . ." Lewis turned to a man, dressed in all black yet again, and motioned him over. Clark heard him whisper, "Could you go get Lana and tell her we have company?"

It was a demand, not a request. The man nodded and left, and Lewis looked back at Clark. "These pies look delicious," he said, picking the closest one up and inspecting it. "Cherry?"

Clark shook his head. "Strawberry. They're all-organic."

Lewis raised his eyebrows. "Strawberry. Lana's favorite."

-- -- --

In her boredom and rebellion against dinner with her father, Lana had decided that her previous exploration of the castle wouldn't cut it; her curious appetite wasn't sated, and she _knew_ there had to be more she hadn't seen.

Besides, she had yet to find the cat statutes, which were seemingly nonexistent. Oh well. It seemed she would not be filling Tobias' bathroom with them one night as a prank. Tobias would find it hilarious; her father would find it immature.

Lana had always gotten along well with Tobias; he was the youngest of the workers on Lewis' staff, only five years older than Lana herself. He was the most dedicated to his job but was never uptight or stiff; when Lewis wasn't around he relaxed and would joke alongside Lana; in their last home, Lana would play pranks on Tobias; stealing all the towels from his bathroom and hiding each in a different room, holding all his mandatory black and navy shirts for a ransom of helping Lana sneak out while he wore fuchsia.

But Lana's friendship with the staff was one of the sources for Lewis' worry about her; the staff was there to help them, and Lana growing close when one mistake could have them gone wasn't acceptable to him. In front of Lewis, there were no jokes, no laughter, and no pranks.

Lana's hand turned the doorknob of one of the rooms she'd glanced at earlier, but hadn't explored; she remembered all four walls being lined with bookshelves. Now that she took longer to look, she noticed that only three of the shelves held books; large leather-bound volumes of red, green, navy, black, and brown. The gold-leafed letters on some were rubbed off from use; others were tattered, some were darkened with age. She glanced at some of the titles she hadn't heard of—_Life_ _Beyond the Stars, The Larger Destiny, Theogony_, all by unfamiliar authors with doctors' titles before their names—and then was surprised to see some she did recognize – numerous Jane Austen works, Homer's _The Odyssey,_ _To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath_ by Steinbeck_, _and others that she'd read and loved. A collection of Shakespeare caught her eye, and she made a mental note to grab it some night when she had nothing to do.

The fourth bookshelf, however, was crowded with artifacts like the ones spread out all over the castle; there were ancient, shapeless things she couldn't name, pieces of stone with strange little symbols, oddly-colored crystals, samples of hieroglyphics, and an array of sophisticated knives. She looked at these closely; most knives she'd seen in any kind of collection were old, crude, and usually made of stone. Usually they were from an old Native American tribe or some ancient civilization and were touted as being advanced. But these looked nothing like the dirty, sharpened stones she knew. They were polished, slick and made specifically for pain; curved blades, twisted blades, thick blades. The handles were all of the same frosty-white crystal, coming to a point on the end in what Lana assumed was yet another weapon; if the blade wasn't any use, the handle could certainly be used for blunt trauma.

And the blades all held the same strange symbols Lana had spotted on the stones and had been sprinkled throughout the hieroglyphics, but these ones showed up the most; a hollow diamond with a round S inside of it, two wavy lines with a thick dot above and beneath them, and one that looked like a rectangular triangle on top of a line with two small dashes through it. They weren't anything she'd ever seen, nothing she recognized, and completely intriguing; she wanted to know what they meant, who had written them, who they were meant for. It was a mystery she couldn't leave uninvestigated.

But just as she began to form ideas and theories and plans for attack, one of Lewis' staff appeared through the door. "Miss Lang?"

Lana turned and faced the man. "Yes, James?"

"Your father requests your presence; a guest has arrived to welcome you to Smallville." The sound of disdain for the small town didn't go unnoticed by Lana, who felt a fraction of what he did as well. She nodded and smiled at him. Always a smile for the staff, no matter how uptight they were.

"Thanks, James. I'll be right there."

James nodded and backed out, leaving Lana to frown at the artifacts. "I'll figure you out," she promised, nodding at the knives and following James back downstairs.

She followed the black suit through the hall till he turned and they were in the dining room. It was a large room with, surprise, red and purple windows; the parquet floor was dark and shiny, and the table in the middle matched the color of the floor. Lana noticed her empty plate before she caught a glimpse of two plump, sugary pies at the far end, wrapped up in welcoming silver tins. It was an unfamiliar sight that Lana loved; usually their pies were served in a fancy china dish—and that was when they did have pie for dessert. Usually it was crème brûlée or flan or crepes—sometimes imported, sometimes baked by a hired chef. To see a good old-fashioned aluminum pie tin made Lana smile.

"There she is."

Lana looked up at her father; he wore a tight-lipped smile and was eyeing her tattered jeans and old tee. She wanted to roll her eyes but didn't, because standing next to her father was perhaps the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

She almost though he was a statue; he was standing tall and unmoving, his eyes latched onto hers, boring a hole there. As she noticed this, the statue—Adonis, she decided—began to blush, and looked down at the floor.

She reminded herself to breathe and took the fifteen steps it required to reach her father and Adonis. Only once had she been rendered breathless by a guy—and it didn't even compare to this. Jason may have been a good kisser, but simply _looking_ at him had never achieved quite this effect on her.

Clark chided himself. He'd been staring at the girl—the long-legged, bronze-skinned, hazel-eyed girl—and hadn't even realized it until those hazel eyes met his green ones. And then there was the blushing; if Chloe had been there she'd have . . . well, frankly Clark couldn't think of what Chloe would do. Who was Chloe again?

"Lana, this is Clark Kent. He brought the pies."

Lana met her father's gaze, then looked again at the pies. "Strawberry?" she asked, eyeing the one with red peeking out from under the flaky crust. She was glad to find that her voice sounded normal.

Clark nodded. "Your favorite."

Lana looked up at him, surprised. Clark swallowed. "I mean, y-your father said—he told me strawberry was your favorite." He smiled apologetically at both Lewis and Lana.

Lana froze. How was it possible that a smile could be so straight, so white, so dazzling, so perfect? It reached his eyes and made them sparkle too, making him almost too bright to look at. Not to mention too beautiful.

Lana shook her head and grinned. "Well, he's right. Thanks for the gesture. It's nice."

Clark grinned lopsidedly and nodded. "No problem." After a few awkward moments where Lewis just looked between his daughter and the Kent boy, he cleared his throat.

"Well," he said, finally breaking the silence. "We thank you, again, for the pies, and make sure you tell your mother thanks, as well," he said, his smile lukewarm. Clark took it as, _my steak is getting cold and you've overstayed your welcome._

He nodded shortly and turned to go back towards the entry hall; neither Lewis nor Lana said good-bye, and he didn't really expect either of them to. He had almost reached the door when he heard his name.

"Clark, wait!"

He held his breath and turned to see Lana following him into the hallway. She had her hands in her back pockets and her long, dark hair fluttered behind her slightly as she came to a halt in front of him.

Up close, she noticed just how tall he really was; she took a step back so as not to crane her neck. "I was just wondering," she said, having already formulated her words on the way. "You're in school, right?"

"Yeah," Clark said slowly. "Smallville High."

"Great," she sighed. "Maybe you can help me."

Clark's mind ran away from him at that point, and he wrestled with it to get it back in control. "W-with what?"

"What do you guys do for fun?"

Clark shrugged, his imagination falling flat. "Drink."

Lana raised her eyebrows, staring at him, wide-eyed. "_You_ drink?"

Clark shook his head and rubbed his temples. His tongue wouldn't work right—why was that? "No, no, I don't. _They_ drink—the other ninety-nine percent of teenagers in Smallville drink for fun. I . . . don't."

"You don't. Got it."

But she was grinning, so Clark just shrugged. "If you're interested, try the quarry." _There's a huge party there with enough booze you can get your hands on. No Dom Perignon, but, hey . . . _

Lana shrugged, crinkled her nose. "Maybe I will." _No, I won't._

Clark nodded once, and reached for the door. He opened it and turned back to Lana. "If that's your thing . . ."

He shrugged and left, allowing the door to close loudly behind him.

-- -- --

She didn't quite know what to think about Clark Kent. On one hand, he _was_ Adonis—golden skin, sea-green eyes, perfect smile, perfect hair. One the other, he seemed very nice, but also very opinionated—the type of opinionated that was stubborn and liked to be right. And if that was the case, his looks didn't matter—pigheadedness was a major turnoff.

But at least one thing was admirable about his stubborn attitude: he didn't drink. And anyone that refused to guzzle whatever the latest craze was—Mike's Hard Lemonade or Bacardi or whatever—earned her respect automatically, even if they did seem inflexible.

"Lana?"

She turned; Lewis was standing in the junction between the corridor and the entry hall, his expression questioning. "Yes, Daddy?"

"Will you be joining me for dinner? Porterhouse and roasted red potatoes. There's a plate for you."

Lana furrowed her eyebrows, and looked back towards the door where Clark had left minutes earlier. "I guess," she said halfheartedly, and followed Lewis back to the dining room.

Her eyes went immediately to the pies sitting on the end of the table; the strawberry one and the apple. Her favorite and . . . well, second favorite. Anything beat cherry. Blech.

She tore her eyes away from them—she really felt like a piece of sweet, home-made strawberry pie, the strawberries of which were probably hand-picked by the strong hands of the tall, brawny farmer that had just—_No! Jason Jason Jason!_

"Sit down, Lana."

Lana broke eye-contact with the pies—because the pies were definitely staring back at her, beckoning her with those delicious, juicy interiors—and sat where her father indicated, where an empty plate and an empty glass sat waiting for her. As soon as her rear-end hit the chair, a server was at her side, helping her with the steaks.

"Thanks, but I can get it," she said, smiling at the server. She smiled back at Lana and folded her hands in front of her, returning through a small door that Lana assumed led to the kitchen. She suddenly found herself curious as to what was back there—probably high-end stainless steel appliances and pots and pans hanging from sophisticated hooks on the ceiling. . . and unnatural light and stifling white uniforms.

She began to spear the little red potatoes on the end of her fork and transplanting them to her plate, Lewis looking on in horror. "Lana, there are serving utensils for that."

Lana rested her fork on her plate, her hands in her lap, and looked at her father. "I'm sorry; I didn't realize."

"Realize what, Lana?" He was grinning, but it wasn't humorous. "It's sitting right next to plate from which you got those potatoes."

Lana smiled; she was always happiest when aggravating her father over some useless, stupid little necessity. "I'm sorry."

Lewis glared. "Mind your attitude, young lady."

Lana grinned wider—just short of laughter, but laughter would _not_ be good—and began to eat, taking dainty little bites, setting her fork down and wiping the corners of her mouth with the cloth napkin after every one. Lewis merely shook his head and finished his steak. When Lana finished, she placed her fork aside, folded her napkin meticulously, and was met by her father's knowing glare.

"What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Since when did you become so rebellious over a simple meal?"

Lana shrugged. "You asked me to eat; I ate. You asked me to use the utensil like I should, so I used all my dinner manners." There was a vein pulsing in Lewis' temple. "Is there something wrong?"

"Is this because of the move?"

She snorted, which caused Lewis' expression to drop to disdain. "The move? Of course not. No, leaving my boyfriend and my best friends and my _life_ behind are no big deal at all, Dad." Uh oh. This wasn't going well. She couldn't rein in her words.

"Lana, we had no choice—"

"We had all the choice in the world, Dad!" Lana pushed her chair back and stood up, almost knocking her glass of water over in the process. "We weren't _forced_ out of our home, you had a perfectly fine job—and yet, we have to leave, right away, without notice, and pick up our lives again in the middle of bum fu-"

"Lana Elizabeth Lang!" Lewis was standing as well now, and looking livid—Lana was surprised the vein in his head hadn't exploded. "That language will not be tolerated in this household!"

Lana closed her mouth and shook her head. "Is anything?" A humorless laugh escaped her anger-flushed lips. "No phone in public, no casual dress on Sundays, no joking with the staff, no loitering in the kitchen—all of these rules that have what purpose, exactly? So we can be more like the Stepford family Mom would never let you have?"

Lewis' face lost all expression at the mention of Lana's mother; his lips grew pale, his hand twitched involuntarily. "I am trying the best I can, Lana," he said, his voice weak. It didn't make Lana feel any sympathy for him, though; in fact, it only made her disdain for him at the moment stronger. She looked away from him.

"It's not good enough, Lewis."

She turned on her heel and left the dining room, waiting for Lewis to call her back, but he didn't. It was low, calling her father by his name, but she couldn't quite muster the tolerance it took to call him "dad," not when her temper flared like this, and certainly not when he hadn't felt like such since the accident. He may have been her biological father, but that kind of disregard allowed Lana to hold a lot against him.

And besides, since when did a dad act like a prison guard? No late-night movies with friends; no going out to eat with Jason later than eight. She may have seemed like the regular rebel-teenage girl, but her problems ran much deeper than not being able to attend the weekend kegger or spending time with her boyfriend in the back of his car at Hook-Up Point or whatever it was called.

And to think all his prerequisites were to keep her from losing her virginity. Lewis really didn't know her at all. Laura would have had a much better time with all this – the whole raising-a-teenage-daughter thing was definitely her forte.

In her musings, she'd wondered out to the behemoth car garage behind the house; how she knew it was there, she wasn't sure, as her ventures outside of the castle walls were slated for tomorrow. But she was there, and she knew what she wanted to do. Looking down at her watch – which sparkled with diamonds; the only reason she wore it was because it had been Laura's last gift – it was definitely too blingy for her to buy on her own – she saw that it was almost six-thirty, and she was sure there was something she could find to do in the simple little town of two thousand, three hundred and eighty three people.

She reached the cool, shaded interior of the garage and looked around; the cars the Langs drove themselves had all been transferred here earlier, so that Lana had been without her BMW—the only thing from her father that she treasured, as it was her only form of transportation that didn't require a uniformed driver—for three days. But there it sat, its glossy paint sparkling in the little sunlight that filtered through the windows along the back wall. She stared at it a moment longer before turning to find Tobias standing next to her. Tobias was a car-guy, and therefore spent his free time babysitting not only Lana's Beemer, but also Lewis' black Lambo and silver Porsche.

"Lana, something wrong?"

Lana grinned; Tobias only called her Lana when Lewis wasn't around. "I need keys. The BMW."

Tobias nodded and, grinning, turned to a sophisticated little box with a keypad installed next to it; his finger worked magic on the touch screen and the box opened with a fancy little ding.

Seconds later and without any confusion or fuss on Tobias' part, he handed over a single black key with a silver, cursive "L" hanging from it. She grinned up at him.

"Thanks, Toby." She turned towards the car and pulled open the door before glancing back.

"By the way," she said, furrowing her brow, "what's the password? My father seemed to have let telling me slip . . ."

Tobias' eyes widened; he always had a way with telling when Lana and her father were at odds, and this was no exception. "Are you sure you want to leave? Wouldn't it be better if you talked with your father?"

Lana shook her head vehemently, her dark hair falling from where she'd tucked it behind her ear to frame her face instead. "No, Tobias; it wouldn't. He doesn't know how to talk things out. Not _these_ things."

Tobias simply nodded, not one to argue, before he said, "Three-two-three-nine-three."

Lana slid into the leather driver's seat. "Three twenty-three ninety-three." She put the key in the ignition and listened to the purr of the engine. Five randomly picked numbers, to ensure no one the ability to guess it easily. "Thanks, Toby. I owe you."

"Just stay out of trouble, it'll be payment enough."

But he didn't smile like he usually did as Lana made her escape; his expression was worried, probably that this little rift between father and daughter would ruin what little relationship they did have. But nevertheless he pushed a small button next to the key box and the garage door zoomed upward easily, allowing Lana an exit.

She put the car in reverse and backed out quickly before pulling a turn-about and facing her car the right way down the lane. As she sped off, she caught a glimpse of Lewis, standing right outside the huge mahogany door, staring after her in the rearview mirror.

-- -- --

At the sound of the rumbling truck bumbling down the lane, Jonathan stopped tinkering around on the John Deere. Truth was, he didn't know what was wrong with it, and it was Clark who probably would. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve and watched as Clark approached him, his eyebrows furrowed as he eyed the machine.

"Broke down again?"

Jonathan nodded. "I've been doing everything I know how to it and she won't give in. Help?"

Clark nodded and took the wrench from his father before bending down and clanking around within the engine compartment.

"So, son," Jonathan said, standing up and taking step back as he watched Clark work. "I'm assuming since you left with two pies and came back with none, they believed you when you said they weren't poisonous."

Clark turned to look at his father; Jonathan's eyebrows were raised, his lips were smiling. Clark shrugged. "They took the pies, they introduced themselves, I left."

Jonathan made a disbelieving noise. "Could you at least share a name?"

Clark stood up, tucking the wrench in his back pocket. "Lang. Lewis and Lana Lang. Bought old Swann manor and moved in just today."

Jonathan's eyebrow furrowed. "Lang?" He ran a hand through his already-ruffled blonde hair. "Lewis, you say?"

Clark nodded, and then, confused, followed Jonathan as he abruptly turned to walk into the house.

Martha was in the kitchen, preparing pies, cookies, and muffins for the Talon. Jonathan crossed to the fridge and pulled out a jug of lemonade, pouring himself a glass while Martha worked around him.

"Hey, Martha, who was it that owned the house just down the street?"

Clark furrowed his eyebrows; the blue farmhouse had been empty for years, longer than Clark could remember. Martha stopped, holding a blueberry muffin in one hand and five chocolate chip cookies in the other. "Langs. They were a nice couple . . . only saw them once or twice but whenever I did, the woman had a smile." Martha put the baked goods in a basket and picked up more. "The guy, on the other hand . . . hmm. He was distant, I guess; I think he came from money but she insisted on a small home."

Clark's eyes widened. "When was this?"

Martha turned, as if only now realizing Clark was there. "Oh, before we adopted you. They lived there for about five years or so, but I guess she finally gave in and they moved to Metropolis right before the meteor shower."

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. "Well, it seems Mr. Lang has moved back to Smallville, towing along a daughter."

Martha's eyebrows shot skyward as well, and she turned to Clark. "Daughter? How old?"

Clark shook his head; he knew that look. The one that said, _perhaps here's a girl that Clark can date and marry and give me grandchildren with._ He held out a hand. "Stop, mom. I just met her. And I assume she's my age, as she asked me what 'we' teenagers do for fun."

Martha rolled her eyes. "At least give us a name."

"Lana." He eyed her suspiciously. "Are you going to run a background check?"

Martha smirked and continued packing the goods; there were four baskets filled with muffins—blueberry, banana nut, blueberry banana—pies, cookies, and various other things that only Martha Kent had perfected. "Can you run these to the Talon? I told Stephenie they'd be there by seven and it's a quarter till."

Clark nodded and took the baskets, each of his large hands wrapping around two handles and carrying them out to the truck.

As he passed the blue farmhouse down the road, he couldn't help but imagine what it would have been like if Lewis and his wife hadn't moved away from Smallville; Chloe and Lana could have been long-time friends, perhaps Lana could have watched the sunset from his loft…

Well, there was still time for that, right? _No! You don't even know the girl, and you're planning the first date! _What was wrong with him? One eyeful of beautiful and suddenly he wanted the whole pie!

And then he realized something; whoever Lewis' wife was, she wasn't here with them. Lewis hadn't mentioned her . . . and there were only two plates at dinner. He suddenly found himself wondering what happened to Lana's nameless mother.

He had reached the Talon before he'd realized it, and instead of turning off the truck, he sat in the driver's seat, thinking. About what, he wasn't sure. Namely it was a mixture of how to fix a John Deere, imagining a little raven-haired girl playing hide-and-seek and the blue farmhouse, strawberry pie, and a pair of long, lean legs sheathed in tattered blue jeans, the thigh of which was just barely peeking out, golden satin.

He shook his head and pulled the key out of the ignition, pocketing it as he climbed out onto the street across from the Talon. He retrieved the baskets and, making sure that everything was in them that was supposed to be and nothing that wasn't, made his way across the street.

But before he could make it halfway, a shiny black car, going a little too fast, sped in front of him, just a foot away from where he stood. He took a step back in surprise – and dropped one of his mom's meticulously prepared baskets. _Oh, great._

He looked up to see the driver of the black car walking towards him and had to remind himself he was holding the baskets so they wouldn't end up splattered on the pavement like their fellow.

"Oh my god," she said, as she pushed her hair out of her face and approached him. "Are you alri—"

Clark stared in disbelief as the girl straightened up, a small smile curling her features.

"Clark Kent. One day in town and you're already throwing yourself at me."

Clark grinned, but stopped when he remembered the beautiful girl in front of him had just attempted vehicular manslaughter. "One _day_? And you're already causing trouble." He chuckled and took a step closer. "Again."

The girl smiled, raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and winked. "A day in the life of Alicia Baker."

-- -- --

Lana drove around town, successfully getting lost within the seemingly endless maze of block upon block, houses here and there that looked alike, trees that all had the same yellowish-green hue. It was almost impossible to tell north from south, the right way from the wrong. She wasn't even sure if she knew how to get back home—but home was the least of her worries.

But soon enough she found what she'd been subconsciously looking for, and that was a small green sign with worn white letters, the edges of which were rusted and peeling and that stood atop a simple, effective metal rod. Even as she breathed out in relief that she'd effectively made some from of progress, she watched a truck piled full of rowdy teenagers turn down the poorly-covered road, sending up a cloud of gravel dust, combined with dry dirt.

She bit her lip in hesitation. Clark had said there would be alcohol – the one thing Lana despised most. But then again, it was that, roaming the streets of Smallville, or going back home. And as she'd already decided: home wasn't an option. Not yet, at least.

She gunned the car and sped after the truck, with little regard for her paint job or her tires.

She followed the outline of the truck for at least four miles, watching for the telltale red glow of brake lights; when finally the truck slowed down to a crawl and the dust began to settle, Lana saw they were converging on a large, hollowed out piece of land with piles of gravel reaching at least twenty feet high. She could see, in the slowly fading sunlight—the sky was just beginning to turn a deep, beautiful blue she'd rarely seen in the sky before—that fifteen cars were already parked along the road, and down in the makeshift valley four or five trucks' tail beds were being used as seats and potential make-out arenas. There was a medium-sized bonfire in the middle of the group of partiers and several people were already reaching into coolers for malts and beers.

She parked behind the truck, on the right hand side of the road, as far from the road as was possible, but the deep ditch prevented her from getting all four wheels off the now entirely gravel road.

As she opened her door, she nearly choked in the onslaught of left over dust hanging in the air; she coughed once, twice, three times before she could breath semi-normally. As she shut her door and pressed the automatic lock on the key chain, she looked up; the girls who had been in the back of the pickup in front of her looked at her car with envy, looked at _her_ with envy. She shyly looked down to push her keys into her pocket before glancing up; her shiny, beautiful Beemer was gray and dull from gravel residue. She frowned before following the gaggle of people down into the valley; she felt the familiar blush creep into her cheeks as more people began to look at her strangely.

Of course, she was the outsider, and she was naive to think the people here would look at her any differently; she drove an expensive car and came alone to a kegger. If that weren't enough to make her stand out, then the fact that her father had just transplanted her into a gaudy Scottish castle on the edge of town certainly would suffice.

She peered out over the landscape peeking out beyond the tops of the gravel mountains. She'd never seen so much green in her life; there were trees everywhere, grass grew in the cracks of the sidewalks, and the best part of it all? She could see the sky; unobstructed by skyscrapers, only clouds and the occasionally plane.

Her eyes then swept down into the base of the valley again; the students there were split up into visible cliques, pretty girls giggling and smiling, handsome guys guffawing, a few tossing a football back and forth. These had to be the popular people—they all wore nice clothes, and all had an air of importance that was tangible even from where Lana walked, midway down the valley.

The group in front of her then burst out in an especially loud ripple of laughter, and a few of the girls turned to glare at her as they chuckled. Maybe this was a bad idea.

They finally reached the bottom of the gorge after what felt like an eternity; she knew being alone would count against her, as it seemed the number one rule was strength in numbers.

And the second rule seemed to be beer equaled a good time.

There were at least fifteen coolers, all overflowing with ice and alcohol. As she got closer to the inner circle of partygoers, she noticed some of them had already been drinking; some laughed a little too loudly at a joke, others lost their footing while standing still. She rolled her eyes as discreetly as possible, and questioned why she'd even come. Maybe a fit of teenage rebellion? Knowing she's even attended a kegger would have Lewis up in arms—it wouldn't matter she wouldn't dare touch the stuff. Vile, disgusting, mind-altering, accident-causing . . .

"Come on, Chloe, one drink! What Clark doesn't know won't kill him!"

Lana's head swung around in the direction from which Clark's name had been called; a joyful looking boy stood with a short, spiky-haired blonde, who stood with her hands on her hips in full-on mother hen mode.

"Pete, damn it . . . I promised Clark. Don't go breaking my promises!" As Lana watched, the girl leaned against the side of a truck. "Besides, you know you can't keep it from Judge Ross. You're a black-out drunk, remember?"

Her friend grew red, and she laughed.

Now or never. Remain friendless or be befriended. She weighed the pros and cons.

Well, they knew Clark, didn't they? Instant icebreaker. Just mention the pies, and she was golden.

She tucked her wavy hair behind her ear and started to walk towards the couple; the moment the guy noticed her, he prodded the blonde. Both turned to face her. She stopped, put up a hand in a peace-offering-like wave, and smiled her friendliest smile.

But before she could introduce herself, Blondie—Chloe, was it? —spoke up, pointing at her with a short finger tipped in short red nails. "You must be the new girl." When Lana furrowed her eyebrows, the girl shrugged. "Sorry; you're the only person I didn't recognize, so I assumed . . ."

Lana nodded and stuck out her hand. "Lana Lang. My father and I just moved here."

The boy peered around the girl. "You don't dress like you're rich."

The girl swung around and smacked him in the chest—hard. "Pete!" When she looked back at Lana, she was smiling apologetically. "Sorry, that's Pete's way of saying welcome to the neighborhood. He's low on subtlety but high on cluelessness, which in his case, proves to be a nearly fatal mixture." When Lana giggled, the girl shook Lana's hand. "Chloe Sullivan, and the blunt one back there is Pete Ross."

Lana grinned and slid her hands in her back pocket. "So. . . I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable or anything, but I overheard you mention Clark. . . any chance it's Clark Kent?"

Chloe raised an eyebrow. "The very same . . . do you know him?"

Lana shook her head quickly. "No, he just . . . uhm, he kind of brought us some pies earlier today. As a welcome gesture."

Pete burst out into raucous laughter. "_Pies?_"

Chloe smacked him again. He rubbed the spot where her hand had made contact and mouthed the word "ow" at the back of her head, but she took no notice. "That's a Kent for you. Overly generous, extremely hospitable." She added a lopsided grin and a, "Not a bad view, either."

Lana grinned; it wasn't the kind of thing she expected from Chloe, who seemed more of a maternal friend than one who'd point out how easy Clark was on the eyes. Pete simply rolled his eyes, as if he heard how handsome his friend was a million times and didn't care to hear it anymore.

Chloe noticed Lana's lack of agreement or denial, and grinned again. "Did he act like a guffawing buffoon?"

Lana cocked an eyebrow and shrugged. "He seemed rather normal to me . . . maybe he stuttered a few times but he was nice, maybe a little on the shy side. No extreme baffoonishness that I noticed, though."

Chloe nodded. "Sounds like normal Clark, still. Bumbling, fumbling, stumbling. The curse of a size fourteen shoe."

Lana grinned as a football thudded to a halt and sent a small dust cloud into the air at her feet. She knelt down and picked it up; her small hand wouldn't fit around it, so she held it in both instead.

"Here!"

Lana turned and looked for the owner; a tall boy with blonde hair was trotting toward her, hand outreached, his face smiling as he appraised her. "New girl?" He didn't wait for a reply before taking the ball and saying, "I don't know you, but I'd like to."

Lana raised an eyebrow. "I can't believe you just pulled off that line with a straight face."

"It ain't a line, sweetie."

Lana rolled her eyes. The guy raised an eyebrow and nodded, his face smug and overly confident. "Don't worry, sweetie; you'll be calling me tomorrow. I'll accept your apology in advance." And with a cheesy wink he turned back to his game of catch.

Lana shook her head and turned back to Chloe. Pointing behind her with a thumb, she said, "I'm assuming they're all like that."

Chloe nodded. "Every last one of them. Well," she added, shrugging with one shoulder, "with one exception."

From the way her eyes glowed and she seemed to have forgotten Pete was behind her, Lana had one guess as to whom Chloe meant.

-- -- --

Alicia Baker was a normal enough girl; pretty, but normal. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and a side of rhinoplasty. Her dad was fairly rich, although he was no Lewis Lang; he owned an ample farmhouse in Granville, surrounded by brand-new stables and sprawling pastures, despite only owning two horses.

But the one thing about Alicia that made her stand out was that she didn't _know_ she was ordinary; she always had larger-than-life aspirations, wanting out of the small town—small state—and opting for larger, metro cities. Which made Metropolis a prime spot for re-location in the middle of the spring semester.

Clark was the most surprised when Alicia arrived in his loft, suitcase in tow, and told him she'd be leaving. Prior to that they'd been friends – close friends, but strictly platonic. Clark Kent had never been the dating type – it came from a strict father and a pushy mother. Fear of punishment; rebellion against persuasion.

Alicia was the opposite of Clark; loud, outgoing, and did mediocre in school. She was friendly and popular; Clark had three best friends, and several acquaintances. Their differences didn't halt their friendship, however; Clark helped Alicia with her calculus homework; Alicia helped Clark fit in . . . sort of. Of course, there was never any chance of making that truly happen.

But when it came to anything beyond friendship, Clark and Alicia were a questionable item; they flirted, but no one was sure if Clark knew that was what they were doing. Alicia sometimes hinted at wanting a relationship, but dim-witted as he was in that specific area, Clark never moved in on an opportunity. Homework help and reputation boosts. That was all the further that Clark Kent and Alicia Baker ever got.

The night of Alicia's departure had always been a mystery to those other than Clark. He was the only one who knew every grisly detail, because he was the only one who knew she was leaving. Their conversation had always been kept a secret between the two of them, and now that Alicia was back in town, she was dredging up old memories…

_The loft was as it usually was in the middle of March; unkempt and cold. Clark's history book lay open on the trunk; he stood next to the window, his telescope pointed out towards nowhere, watching as the half-moon became ever clearer in the midday blue of the sky. Somewhere out there had been a planet with a radioactive core – the remains of which were devoid of life, a monumental graveyard._

"_Clark, if you keep looking through that thing and it's not at a girl, then all my hard work to make you popular has been in vain."_

_Clark spun, almost knocking the telescope over in the process. "Alicia, you know sneaking up on me leads to disaster."_

"_Eh." She shrugged black-knit clothed shoulders. "As long as those feet of yours don't crush anything of value . . . which I don't think is a problem up here." She nudged the worn-out couch with one of her pointy-toed boots. "Ew."_

_Clark frowned in defense of his couch. "If you don't stop it'll nudge you back."_

_Alicia made a face and took a step back; Clark chuckled and abandoned his telescope. As he crossed the dusty loft, he noticed a pink suitcase, cleverly hidden behind Alicia's legs. He pointed a long finger at it. "Taking your spring break vacation a week early?"_

_Alicia crinkled her nose, shrugged, and nodded. "Time for a new place."_

_His brow creased. "And that means . . .?"_

"_My spring break is going to be permanent. I'm tired of Smallville."_

_Clark did a double take; he knew she grew weary of small-town life but had never heard her word it so black and white. "Tired?" He laughed. She glared._

"_Yes. I'm tried of knowing what's down every street, knowing the name of every student in school, of the same old parties in the quarry. I want something new, more exciting . . . clubs and adventures. Big city stuff, you know?"_

_Clark knew. He just didn't understand. Tired? Of Smallville? Pfft._

"_And you're just going to leave. Pack up your clothes, jump in your car and go . . . where, exactly?"_

"_Metropolis, of course. I can't afford a plane ticket without Daddy and he won't let me go to New York or L.A. . . ."_

"_And it's this easy? Say goodbye and go?"_

_Alicia furrowed her eyebrows. "Of course it isn't_ easy._ It's possibly the hardest decision I've ever made."_

"_Then remind me why you're going."_

"_It's just something I have to do; you can understand that, can't you?"_

_Clark shrugged in a pained kind of way; Alicia was one of his closest friends. And he didn't take well to surprises._

_Alicia wrapped her arms around him in a spontaneous hug. "You have to know how hard this is for me. I'm leaving my life behind."_

"_I don't see anyone forcing you." He wasn't returning the hug. She looked up at him._

"_I'm forcing myself. I'm bored." She squeezed him – or came as close to squeezing as she could, since squeezing was actually quite hard to do – and buried her cheek into his warm flannel shirt. "I just thought I'd tell you before I disappeared and you turned up for calculus help on Monday without a student."_

"_Thanks for the insight, it's greatly appreciated."_

_Alicia jabbed him in the stomach. "Grouch." She shook her finger. "Ow. Eat a donut."_

_Clark smiled, and then frowned. "I'm mad at you."_

"_Don't be. I'm just leaving."_

"_You're going to Metropolis."_

"_And I won't be swallowed whole – I swear." She giggled. "The first sign of girl-swallowing thingamajigs and I'll call you."_

"_Okay."_

_Alicia chuckled again and looked up at him, resting her chin on his chest. So tall. "Are you going to miss me?"_

"_Yeah; now I don't have anything to do on Monday afternoons but fix the John Deere."_

"_Ha, ha."_

_Clark finally wrapped his arms around her. She snuggled in closer. "And you're really going to go? This isn't April Fool's half a month early?"_

"_I have never once pulled an April Fool's prank in my life."_

"_Ha."_

"_Okay, excluding the keyboard-in-Jell-O thing. But you have to admit that was awesome."_

"_Kinda."_

_Alicia laughed and pulled away. "I'm leaving at four, so I can't stay long."_

_Clark shrugged and stepped back. "I guess I'll see you whenever you get tired of Metropolis. I bet twenty bucks you don't last past summer."_

"_Make it fifty and I'm game."_

_Clark smiled. "I'm gonna miss you."_

"_I know. I'll miss you too. No more popularity lessons." Alicia sniffed dramatically. Clark shrugged._

"_Never really was my thing, to tell the truth."_

"_Oh, no, I figured that out on the second day."_

_Clark laughed and pulled her back into a tighter hug. "Stay safe, Alicia."_

_Alicia nodded into his shirt. "Try not to break anything."_

"_I haven't broken a bone in my life."_

"_No; I mean the stuff around you."_

_Clark smirked and let her go. She took a step backwards and grabbed the handle on her suitcase, pulling it along behind her as she made her way towards the stairs. As she began to descend, she looked back and smiled, a melancholy grin that made Clark grimace. When she disappeared down the staircase, Clark sighed and went back to his window. He appraised the telescope, then shook his head and leaned against the wall. _

_Clark hadn't heard the clunking of stiletto boot heels across the wood; a hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him around swiftly, catching him off guard. Before he could react, a pair of glossy, pouty lips were on his. His eyes widened and then closed, as a pair of arms wrapped around his neck and pulled him closer; to his immense surprise he reacted by wrapping his arms around her and kissing her back._

_When Alicia pulled back, her lip gloss slightly smeared and her eyes sparkling with what Clark assumed were tears, she muttered a watery goodbye and hurried back across the loft; she was in her car and driving down the lane before he said, "Bye," and tasted the strawberry gloss remnants on his tongue . . ._

Old memories that Clark had somehow repressed. He frowned at the memory as they sat down at a table in the Talon, each with a large mug in hand.

Alicia tucked her blonde hair behind her ear before taking a sip of her mocha cappuccino, all the while looking at Clark. "To be quite honest, you're the last person I expected to run over today."

Clark frowned at her. "The last? Do you have a list?"

Alicia cocked her head to the side. "Not a list, no . . . just a really bad habit."

By the looks of her smile and the twinkle in her eyes, she was kidding. Or Clark hoped.

"Why'd you come back?"

Alicia raised an eyebrow. "Thanks for the welcome. Would you like me to leave?"

Clark shook his head. "No, it's just . . . it didn't seem like you _would_ be coming back, is all. You made it pretty apparent you were tired of this place. Now you're running down civilians with the best of them."

Alicia shrugged. "Eh. Metropolis is a big city."

"I thought that was what you were into."

"Yeah, me too."

Clark made a face. "Thought wrong, huh."

Alicia nodded. "But I got fifty bucks out of the deal, so . . ." When Clark gave her a fake blank look, she grinned and stuck out a hand. "Fifty bucks I wouldn't make it past summer, remember? Pay up, Kent."

Clark shook his head and pulled out his wallet. "What is it with girls kicking my butt today?"

"Ouch." Alicia grinned and snatched the bills away from him. That was the thing about Clark: he always had the cash. "Who else?"

"Chloe."

"Ah!" Alicia's face brightened; she smiled. "How is Chlo? Won a Pulitzer yet?"

"No, but I think _she_ thinks she has."

Alicia laughed before taking one more drink of her drink; after that, she pushed it away, half empty. "You know, I missed this."

Clark looked up at her over his mug. "You mean us?"

"Whatever 'us' is."

Clark snorted and nodded in agreement. "Well, you made a choice."

Alicia crinkled her nose. "My choices don't work out so well for me."

Clark took the time to watch her, study her differences; her hair was highlighted, her skin was a touch tanner, her make-up was different. But it went beyond that; her expressions had changed, her movements, her reactions. The familiar nose-crinkle looked sadder than he had always remembered it; her shrug looked more depressed.

"What happened, Alicia?"

She shook her head, crossed her arms. "Nothing, really; it's just not been what I expected."

Clark shook his head and reached across the little round table, resting his hand on her arm. She looked down at this, and Clark saw her expression harden.

"You can tell me, remember?"

She looked up at him as if she were going to divulge a deep, dark secret; her eyes were wide, almost afraid, glittering with what appeared to be tears. But in a half-second she'd blinked, smiled, and cocked her head to the side. "It's nothing. I just missed Smallville—boring little farm town that it is."

Clark gave up for the time being; being the stubborn creature she was, she wouldn't tell him if she didn't want to. "Alright, then." He removed his hand from her arm and looked down at his watch. "It's getting kind of late."

"It's eight thirty, Clark."

He shrugged. "Late for me."

She nodded and laughed. "Yeah, I guess. God," she said, her voice loud and jubilant again. "You really haven't changed at all, have you?"

Clark smiled proudly. "Nope."

"Damn. I was expecting to come back and have a subject to be proud of."

Clark grinned and finished his latte before the real question became unbearably impossible to ignore. This wasn't what he wanted to get into right now. Or, you know, never worked well for him too.

But Alicia seemed to be able to mind-read, and she wasn't against bringing the subject up.

"So, when I left . . ."

She set Clark with a calculating gaze. He watched her as he stubbornly remained quiet. She raised her eyebrows. Clark nodded, prompting her to continue. She sighed, then took a deep breath.

"I kinda noticed a bit of a . . . liplock."

"Oh." Clark furrowed his eyebrows. "Is that what that was?"

"When you play mouth hockey? Yeah, that's called a kiss, Clark. I guess I should have gone over the basics with you beforehand."

Clark smirked at her. "Well, I thought maybe you were giving me CPR, but I wasn't sure because I wasn't really dying."

Alicia laughed, but didn't come up with a witty reply, which disappointed Clark. He'd come to realize, in the past fifteen minutes, that the one thing he missed most about Alicia was her snark—snark that rivaled even Chloe's, who was known for her killer sarcasm.

He watched her for a few more minutes before she dropped the subject completely and looked down at her phone, which lay on the table next to her abandoned drink. "I should probably go," she said. "Daddy's expecting me before ten and the earlier I arrive the happier he'll be." She threw Clark a patronizing grin. "It'd do no good to upset him on my first day back, he wouldn't give me my room back."

Clark nodded back and both rose from their chairs at the same time. She slipped on a light jacket and led Clark to the door, tucking her phone in her purse—a big metallic leather thing with shiny silver rings and studs all over it – and pulling out her keys. Once she opened the door, a short breeze rippled through her hair, blowing the scent of raspberry shampoo back towards Clark.

He followed her out onto the sidewalk, his eyes scanning the streets. The lamps had been ignited, and the sky was slowly yet surely darkening, the stars beginning to twinkle in their nest of navy velvet.

"I meant it."

Clark was broken form his stargazing reverie. "Meant . . . what?"

Alicia straightened, her chin high, her eyes set strongly on him. "The kiss."

Clark furrowed his eyebrows, stuck his hands in his pockets, trained his eyes on his shoes. "Alicia, you—"

"No, Clark," she said, sighing and smiling lightly. "It wasn't because I was leaving, or I thought I'd never see you . . . it was because that's something I've wanted to do since I moved here freshman year."

She looked up at him with glowing blue eyes; Clark looked up from his worn-out work boots and met her gaze. "And you chose the night you were leaving to do it, and the night you came back to tell me?"

Alicia grinned and turned around, peering across the street. "I guess timing's not my thing."

With a glance back at him and a wink, she jogged across the street and got into her car. Clark stared after the little black car until it was long gone.

-- -- --

The night passed quickly enough; Chloe and Pete kept entertaining company, teasing each other and regaling Lana with tales of the last time Pete had gotten drunk, which apparently included Pete bursting into the Kents' kitchen at one in the morning and yelling about streaking with Clark, which Chloe assured Lana did _not_ happen, but had Clark not been a designated driver, it would have been the sight of the century—from Chloe's telling of the tale, of course. Pete was too busy turning red and sputtering to add anything.

"But _did_ you go streaking?" Lana asked Pete; if possible, his dark cheeks grew even more red, so that he somewhat resembled a stoplight in the faint glow from the bonfire.

Chloe's uncontrollable laughter told Lana all she needed to know before the subject of Clark was brought up yet again. Lana was quickly learning that these were his two best friends, people who loved him unconditionally, and who thought the world of him—but also didn't mind poking fun at their oaf of a friend, either.

"So Officer Clark skived out on the party," Pete said, leaning back into the lawn chair he'd recently acquired. "Why am I not surprised?"

Chloe shrugged and took a drink of her Pepsi—thoughtfully she'd brought her own non-alcoholic supply of beverages. "Because it's Clark, square supreme and anti-socialist to boot. Mix people, party, and booze and you can automatically rule Clark's attendance out."

Lana listened, intrigued. "You mean he doesn't party?"

Chloe cast Lana a sidelong glance and giggled. "Clark is the anti-partier."

"Then what does he do for fun?" He'd made it seem as if there was nothing to do around here _but_ party.

"He sits in his loft and broods."

Lana laughed. "What?"

"Seriously – his dad built him this amazing loft in their barn where he just sits there and reads, or studies, or does . . . whatever it is boring farm boys do."

Lana suddenly found herself curious as to what the Kent farm looked like – especially Clark's secret hideout.

Pete rolled his eyes. "He doesn't use that loft the way he should."

Chloe set him with a calculating glare. "I'm almost afraid to ask—how _should_ he use it?"

"It's gotta be an amazing make-out spot: don't tell me you haven't thought about it, Chlo."

Chloe cleared her throat and started chattering about the time. A breeze swept through the valley and Lana shivered; for early September it was surprisingly chilly.

Chloe was standing up now, packing away her cooler and folding up a lawn chair. Pete helped, taking the cooler from her as they both turned to face Lana. Chloe raised an eyebrow and shrugged.

"I know it's still kind of early, but we're just going to get coffee. If you'd like to, you can come."

Lana didn't pause to think. Coffee or Lewis. The choice was surprisingly easy. "Sure, sounds fun."

Pete chuckled. "You know you're hanging with the new girl when she thinks coffee is fun."

Lana grinned and followed them back through the gorge; the guy who had hit on her earlier watched with wistful eyes as she left the party and called out, "Sullivan'll give you my number, sweetheart!"

Chloe rolled her eyes and flipped the guy the bird, never turning to look at him. Pete nudged her.

"Fordman gave you his number?"

Chloe glared at him. "He forced it on me. I certainly didn't want it."

Pete nodded as they walked up the valley, the stairs hard to locate in the dark. "He'll give anything that lives, breathes, and has breasts his number," he said, more for Lana's benefit. She laughed, and Chloe smacked him.

"Thanks for the compliment."

"Aw, Chloe…"

They reached the gravel road and Chloe and Pete crossed to an old-fashioned red car with a white convertible top. Chloe stuck the key into the trunk and it popped open so she could stuff the cooler, rather unceremoniously, into the hole. Pete slid the chair in on top and closed it before leaning on the bumper.

"You wanna ride with us?"

Lana shook her head and reached into her pocket to withdraw her keys. "No, I've got . . . my own. . . Damn!"

Her keys weren't in the right pocket, nor were they in the wrong one. Her eyes flew wide in panic before she started to run through the night in her head . . .

Laughing girls . . . keys in pocket . . . dusty car . . . _Damn!_ Where were they?

Chloe furrowed her eyebrows at Lana, who was frantically searching the ground with her hazel eyes. "What's wrong?"

Lightbulb! Tobias was bound to have a spare set of keys.

But her phone lay on her bed back home, where she'd left it after talking to Jason. _A great night gets better._

"Do you have a phone I can borrow? I've lost my keys but there are spares at home."

"We could just give you a ride to your house and you could get them, if you like."

Lana shook her head. "Someone will bring them if I call."

"Alright." Chloe pulled out a phone and handed it over; Lana quickly punched in the number for Tobias' private cell.

After a few minutes' negotiations with him—mainly that Lana would come home before midnight—Tobias agreed to bring the keys to the Beemer. Lana told him to meet them at the coffeehouse in town, which Chloe assured her Tobias would be able to find, as it was the old-school theatre in the middle of Main Street. When she snapped the phone shut and handed it back, Chloe grinned.

"Jump in. You'll love the Talon."

-- -- --

**Disclaimer.  
**I own nothing.

**Author's Note.  
**Sorry for the long wait on the second chapter. Third chapter up sometime soon.


	3. Chapter 3

Clark didn't feel well. His chest felt heavy, and his head was spinning more than was normal. Well, spinning head syndrome wasn't ever normal.

Driving didn't seem to be an option, and Clark really didn't know where to go—home felt like light-years away and just held silence, which promised more brooding—so he turned right around and went back into the Talon. At least there he could have some peace and non-quiet. Nice and comfortable to not think about Alicia and that kiss from seven months ago.

He sat down on the comfy curved couch in the corner, his back sinking into the cushions as he rested his head in his hands. Why now? Did Alicia think she'd be able to come back to everything the way it was? Did she not pause to think about whether or not he'd met someone since?

Which, of course, he hadn't . . . unless you counted Lana . . . and Lana was practically a stranger.

Duh.

What to do? Alicia used to be one of his best friends, and seeing her again definitely brought back that feeling of nostalgia . . . and of course he liked her . . . but was it in the same way she liked him? Argh! Seventeen and not even sure how to distinguish friend like from more-than-friend like. He should have been paying attention during Alicia's popularity lessons instead of doodling Kryptonian symbols on the edge of his notebook. Surely there had been a lecture on this particular subject in the midst of all those "what to wear" and "what not to do in public" speeches.

And there was the fact that, even if he was sure of his feelings, she didn't know of his abilities. Was it worth it to start something if he'd just look like a delusional with multiple-personality disorder? Clark was betting not.

He was running through the possible conversations he could have with Alicia about his abilities, most of which ending with a screaming, running Alicia, when the door opened with a short tinkling of bell and a small gust of cool breeze. It ruffled Clark's hair and he looked up, semi-annoyed at the distraction.

Chloe and Pete were nudging each other, each grinning and glaring at one another. Arguing. But not bad arguing. Just . . . Chloe and Pete arguing. The party of at the quarry must have been boring without being able to drink. Chloe swung her head in Clark's direction and grinned. She elbowed Pete and said, "Toldja he was here."

Pete rolled his eyes. "I never argued with you!"

Clark straightened up, his hands in his lap. "Hey guys."

Pete plopped down next to him and punched him in the arm. "How's it going, Sheriff Kent?"

Clark grinned as Pete shook out his hand. "Fine."

Chloe perched herself on a chair across from the couch. "Why are you at the Talon? Isn't it past your bedtime?"

Clark smirked. "I ran into Alicia. Or, she almost ran over me, more accurately."

"Baker?" Pete's voice stretched an octave. Clark chuckled.

"Do we know any other Alicia's?"

"Alicia Silverstone?"

"Ha."

Chloe leaned against the back of her chair, swinging her purse over the back of it. "So she's back from Metropolis?" She shrugged. "Did she say why?"

"She got tired of it."

Chloe scoffed. "I don't know how anyone can grow tired of Metropolis."

"Well, not everyone's an investigative journalist, Chlo."

Chloe stuck her tongue out at Pete and the door opened again.

"Thanks, Toby. I'll be home soon enough."

Clark looked up for the sweet, melodious voice he shouldn't have recognized, but did anyways. Her long raven hair was hiding her face as she tucked her keys into the pocket of those jeans that gave him a tiny glimpse of what lay beneath them . . . the golden skin just about her knee seemed to shimmer slightly. She straightened up, a thin hand pushing dark hair out of hazel eyes that immediately connected with his.

It was like the air around them filled with tangible, corporeal electricity; he couldn't look away from her, even if he wanted to. She looked exactly the way she had earlier, but she had a different air about her; maybe it was because she was out of her element, no longer cooped up in an ancient castle.

Whatever the cause was, Clark liked the change.

"Hey, Lana."

Lana paused. Clark was perhaps the last person she expected to run into; Chloe and Pete had described him as a homebody. So to see him sitting in the Talon by himself threw her off her game. Her reply was short.

"Hi."

Chloe looked between the two of them; the chemistry between them was so thick she could have lit it with a Bunsen burner. "I'd introduce you two but from what Lana's said, I'm too late."

Pete snickered. "_Pies_."

Clark did a double take. Chloe and Lana knew each other? "How'd you two meet?"

Chloe shrugged. "Lana showed up at the quarry. Whitney Fordman tried to capture her attention but we were too busy telling her embarrassing stories." Her eyes glittered menacingly. Clark only hoped she hadn't shared the story about when Pete snuck them into a strip club. The only reason Chloe had gone along was to watch Clark's reaction when Pete bought him a lap dance.

Of course, they got kicked out a few minutes later, but it was still worth it, in Pete's opinion.

Lana raised an eyebrow and looked at Chloe. She suddenly felt awkward – like she wasn't dressed nicely enough. Or, more accurately, like she was going to be sick. Clark was a nice enough guy, but these butterflies were more than she could handle.

"Well, I've got my keys, so I really should get going," she said. "Wouldn't want to make my dad too mad." _Yeah, right._

Chloe cocked and eyebrow and stared at her. "No coffee?" Lana shook her head. Chloe shrugged. "Alright then." She glanced at Clark, who was inconspicuously trying to watch Lana. "Uhm, well . . . Pete and I will just stay here and get our coffee . . . Clark, would you mind running Lana out to her car? It's on Wayson's Road, down by the quarry. Unless you're busy, of course."

Lana froze; she hadn't thought of Chloe as being annoying until right this second. Clark's cheeks turned a slight pink, his lips pursed in a mixture of pleasure and humility. Yeah; this was a regular occurrence. It seemed Chloe's sole intent was to embarrass her large friend.

Finally, though, he said, "Sure. If Lana doesn't object."

Lana shook her head. _Yes, I object. Well, not really. Only because I'm afraid being cooped up in a truck with you for any amount of extended time will make me so nervous that I might end up ruining your upholstery. Which I really hope doesn't happen, because not only would you never look at me the same way again, but how in the world would I explain that to my boyfriend? Hey, Jason? I like this guy enough that I threw up all over him and his truck. Is that normal? Are you jealous?_

"That's fine."

Clark smiled lightly and stood up, stretching his hand into his pocket and pulling out his own keys. Chloe wagged an eyebrow at Pete, who glared at her. Clark led her back out of the coffee shop, but not before she turned to look back at Chloe, setting her with a glare that Pete cringed away from. Chloe only grinned smugly.

As Clark held open the door for her, she heard Pete mutter, "And the point of that was?"

Chloe's reply sent a strangely pleasant chill down her back.

"They'll thank me later."

Clark's old Dodge was surprisingly quiet and comfortable. She barely felt the potholes as they turned onto Wayson's Road, but the shocks were still such that she could feel them. Before, in her BMW, she hadn't.

His large fingers messed with the dial on the radio, trying to coax a clear channel to come through. Nothing came up but semi-static-y Willie Nelson, so he stopped adjusting and put both hands on the wheel. The only noise was the crooning of _Somebody Pick Up My Pieces, _a Willie song she hadn't heard before.

_Don't follow my footsteps,  
Step over my trail.  
The road is too narrow,  
And your footing could fail.  
And the fall to the bottom  
Could tear you apart;  
And they'll be picking up pieces  
Of you and your heart.  
_

She listened to the song for a while before the lack of conversation got to Clark. He cleared his throat and, fearing his voice might crack, turned to Lana.

"So, will you be starting school soon?"

Lana pulled her eyes away form the window and glanced up at him. Even sitting down, she had to look _up_. "Yeah. Monday."

Clark nodded. "That's great. I'm sure you'll like it, it's really not as bad as everyone says." He glanced at her sideways through the darkness of the cab. "Where did you go before?"

"Excelsior in Metropolis. It was private." Lana glanced down at her hands. "I guess here I don't have to worry about uniforms, huh?"

Clark grinned at the windshield. "No uniforms."

"That's good; the same skirt and blazer every day was really cramping my style."

Clark chuckled, causing an unexpected smile to spread across Lana's features. She tried to smother it, only succeeding in turning it into a grin. Which refused to budge.

The truth was, making Clark laugh and smile made her happy. Cut and dry. No way around it. No use in hiding it, either; she turned to look at him.

In the filtered moonlight shining through the cab of the truck, his features were all highlighted and low-lighted, making his face a mysterious, shadowy work of art. His high cheekbones were pale, the hollows of his cheeks dark in shadow. The straight edge of his nose was perfect, rounding at the tip and leading down to slightly protruding, pink lips, which hovered over a strong chin. His jawline was sharp and highlighted by the moon; his neck was sculpted and muscular. His dark, curly hair was shiny, soft-looking. She wanted to reach out and touch it.

The thing about Clark was, next to him, she felt inadequate. She knew she was pretty; when she was six, she began karate lessons—a requirement from her mother. Later she found out that Laura feared Lana would have a harder time than most girls, that her looks would make her a target for predators, and therefore took every precaution so that Lana could protect herself. She'd always been fairly popular with boys, despite not wanting anything to do with them—Jason was her first relationship, and that had started because he'd protected her from a guy who "got what he wanted and wanted what he saw." It was easy to fall for him: he was the hero, she was the damsel, and he'd saved her. It was only natural.

But sitting next to Clark felt like she was sitting next to a great piece of art—Michelangelo's _David_, perhaps, or better; it was hard to choose, because no sculpture she could think of could half compare to the beauty beside her. His perfections were only heightened by whatever flaws he did have; a small scar above his lip that barely reflected the moonlight, the way his skin on his cheeks was constantly a blushed pink color. She felt insufficient, normal beside him, despite her glowing skin, deep hazel eyes. It couldn't compare to the preternatural splendor in the driver's seat.

However, Clark felt completely the opposite; his clumsily large hands and goofy grin couldn't dream to measure up to the easy grace of Lana's movements and smile; she moved seamlessly, as if she were floating in a calmly ebbing pool. Clark had been taking in every detail in small glimpses, trying to commit every finite feature to memory. Why, he wasn't sure; Lana compelled him to do things he'd never thought to do before. Never had a grace this strong, this intoxicating, been in his presence; he felt the need to grasp onto it and never forget, as if in some inexplicable way her effortlessness could contradict his ineptness.

He gave her a sideways look, and found that she was staring at him carefully, as if she'd found a novel to be read in his features. Instead of looking away, embarrassed, he captured her gaze in his; she found it impossible to look away.

His eyes were fathoms of deep, rolling waves, crashing into one another and creating the most beautiful rainbow of blues, greens, and grays she's ever seen. His eyes were light, but never dull; the moonlight shining on them caused the flecks of different colors – gold, hazel, deepest emerald – to shimmer like cascading jewels, framed by soft lids and long lashes. It was hard to imagine seeing anything more beautiful; the bluest water, sunlight on fresh snow, iced-over pines – nothing compared.

She was entranced, and didn't notice they'd begun to veer off the road until Clark jerked the wheel and the truck back to the middle of the lane.

The spell was broken; Lana looked out the windshield to see that they were slowly approaching the gorge. The tall mountains of gravel peeked out, white and ghostly. She began to search for her car, hoping Clark wouldn't hit it with his truck before she spotted it.

"So, uhm," he said, clearing his throat; he was obviously trying to deflect the awkward moment. "Why'd you move to Smallville?"

Lana furrowed her eyebrows, glaring through the glass. "I honestly couldn't tell you."

Clark cocked an eyebrow. "You mean, you don't know?"

Lana sighed and leaned back in her seat. The truck crawled to a halt. "My dad told me it was something to do with a business opportunity." Smiling, she added, "What opportunity Smallville holds, I haven't the faintest idea."

She glanced up at Clark, who was frowning at the steering wheel. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said quickly. She hadn't meant to offend him if she had; perhaps he was one of those that loved his town, never wanted to leave it. More power to him.

"No, it's fine, it's just . . . I don't understand why your father wouldn't explain _everything_ to you before uprooting you. I mean," he added, throwing her an apologetic look, "my family believes in honesty, and that keeping secrets like that is a sure-fire way to ruin a relationship." _No need to mention it's kind of a double standard… but that's a special situation._

Lana frowned. "Your parents seem like good people, but not everyone can live like that. Sometimes you have to keep a secret to save someone."

Clark exhaled loudly. "Believe me, no one understands that better than I do. But I'd think if your father wanted you to be happy, he'd tell you why you moved here . . . don't you?"

Lana's expression darkened and she looked at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Her voice was weak, quiet – just below a murmur. Quiet enough to go unnoticed by human ears. "Her hasn't cared about my happiness since Mom died."

Clark's jaw dropped in surprise; he was sure she hadn't meant for him to hear that, but he had, and he had a hard time believing it. That Lana could think so lowly of her father, of herself, made Clark wonder if life behind those castle walls was as glamorous and some would have it sound.

"I'm sure that's not the truth," he said quietly. Lana's eyes snapped up to meet his, and he swore he could see the faint glimmer of a tear trail down her cheek. She rolled her eyes and pursed her lips.

"It doesn't matter."

She pushed the truck door open and landed on the road, gravel crunching beneath her feet. She shut the door a little to hard; it slammed and the clang of metal filled the night. On the other side, Clark had jumped out as well. She started walking before he did, but it didn't take long for him to catch up.

"Lana, are you sure you don't want to talk?" He lagged behind only slightly, and by choice. It would have been effortless to stop her in her tracks. "I'm a completely unbiased listener."

"No, Clark," she said over her shoulder. Her car should be somewhere close. "I've already told you more than I should have."

"If you bottle it up, it only gets worse."

"Thanks for the warning." Her eyes searched the darkness, but saw nothing. Cursing, she dug in her pocket for her keys; when her fingers wrapped around them, she pulled them out and pounded the unlock button with her thumb. Twenty feet in front of her, a dome light flared and a small horn honked.

Clark sighed, exasperated. "Lana, listen!" He took two long strides and planted himself in front of her, one of his large hands on each of her shoulders. "I know what it's like to feel like you're alone, like no one cares, I honestly do. But if you let it consume you, then you're no better than those people who don't give a damn." His expression softened, and he tilted his head to look into her eyes easier. "If you don't take care of yourself first, then no one will."

Lana stared up into the oceanic eyes. His words made sense, they really did. Which was more than she had expected from the farm boy. "I'm sorry, Clark," she said, facing him with a penetrating gaze. "You tried, you honestly did." She smiled up at him, wanting to trace his lips with her finger, a completely non-realistic urge. "But you don't even know me."

She pushed past him, fighting the urge to break down into unreasonable tears, and climbed into the drivers' seat, the engine revving to life as she shoved the key into the ignition. As she pulled a U-turn and drove past him, she thought she saw Clark's lips from her name through the darkness and her disobedient tears.

He almost didn't answer his phone as it rang from its place on the trunk; he barely glanced at it long enough to see it was Chloe calling, no doubt wondering what happened while taking Lana to her car. He threw it a dirty look before reconsidering and flipping it open; he hadn't even put it to his ear before Chloe's voice came through the line.

"Tell me everything!"

Clark frowned at the receiver. "There's nothing to tell."

Or at least, nothing he wanted Chloe to get her hands on; it was evident that Lana hadn't intended revealing as much as she did tonight to Clark, and he doubted she wanted Chloe to know. Clark didn't want Chloe to know. The investigative journalist in her would take over until she dug herself into too deep a hole, and would ruin any chance of a friendship with Lana. Clark didn't want that.

Chloe's skepticism flowed thick. "Right. If there really wasn't, how come she tore through town like a bat outta hell, little regard for pedestrians or light poles?"

Clark straightened up. "Why, did something happen?" A strew of scenarios – most of them involving a mangled little black car and Jaws of Life – ran rampant through his mind.

"No, but that doesn't cover up that something _obviously _happened between you two."

Clark leaned back and sighed. "We had a small misunderstanding." He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of crickets. "It not really your business, though."

Silence. Icy, prickly, deadly silence from Chloe that sent a wave of chills down his spine. "Chloe?" Still nothing. "Chloe, come on. I don't mean it in a bad way. You _know_ that if I told you, you wouldn't be able to leave her alone about it, and I don't want you to bother her about this."

"If I knew what it was I'd know if I'd bother her about it."

"Nice try; I'm not telling. It's her business; I wasn't supposed to hear it."

Chloe's excitement mounted. "Oooh, this must be some good dirt if Miss Millionaire didn't want Fort Knox to know."

Clark chuckled, knowing when to stop before crossing the boundary of accidentally letting something slip. "Good night, Chloe."

"Yeah, g'night. See you Monday."

Clark chuckled at Chloe's disdain as he hit the end button and tossed the phone onto the couch beside him. His fingers went immediately to his hair, tugging slightly – his key concentration habit.

He wanted to know what Lana had been through to distrust her father so much. What could possibly happen to ruin a relationship so? He knew of people who were annoyed or embarrassed by their parents, but . . . Lana's oath in the truck made it seem like her father was self-possessed, that he didn't take into consideration Lana's feelings on any matter. Could that be true? Could Lewis, the semi-kind man he'd met earlier, really have such disregard for his only daughter?

_You don't even know me._ Clark was beginning to realize the intensity of that statement.

Because when it all came down to it, Lana and Clark were strangers to one another; Clark knew nothing about her, and therefore this urge to protect her was completely irrational. He'd chalk it up to friendship, or his desire to be able to call her his friend, but he had to question his motives.

He buried his head in his hands. This couldn't be fair, that Clark could care so much about people. It just wasn't natural.

_Duh, Clark. You're about as natural as a McDonald's Fillet'O'Fish._

Clack, clack, clack. The sound of stiletto boot heels climbing the wooden steps broke Clark from his self-pity.

"You know, Clark, this loft could do with a good, thorough cleaning."

His head snapped up to see Alicia mounting the steps and appraising the space. She frowned at the traces of dust on the tabletops.

"Alicia, it's a barn."

"A barn you spend ninety-nine point nine percent of your time in."

Clark smirked. "Your father let you out?"

Alicia cocked an eyebrow and rolled her eyes. "I actually kinda snuck out . . . out my window and down the trellis? He was drinking in his den anyways so he didn't hear my car."

"So rebellious."

Alicia nodded and plopped down on the couch, one leg tucked under the other and her arm hooked over the back. "I just wanted to make sure you were alright."

Clark looked down at his hands. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Alicia grinned and cocked her head to the side. "I kind of dropped a lot of information on you and left."

Clark laughed. "No, the opposite; you barely told me anything and left."

"Well, we both agree on the last part."

Clark straightened up and looked at her. "Alicia, be serious for a minute."

"Alright." He watched as she squared her shoulders, sat stark straight, and faced him, all triviality aside. "I'm serious."

Clark tossed one of the lumpy throw pillows at her – which she deflected with an arm before sticking her tongue out at him – and sighed loudly. "You haven't changed at all, have you? Still that same facetious girl."

She smiled proudly for a moment, but then her eyes darkened; again, Clark got the feeling that she held a deep, dark secret, one she didn't want anyone to know and never planned on sharing. But Clark had seen through her in the Talon, and it was only a matter of time before he did again . . .

She furrowed her eyebrows, and looked down at the fabric of the couch. "I'm really not, Clark. The same, that is. That's what scares me."

Clark frowned. "And are you planning on telling me, or just leaving again instead?"

She glanced up at him with a melancholy grin and shrugged. "I could, but I'm afraid I'd bore you . . ." When Clark made a small sound of disbelief, she rolled her eyes and added, "Or worse, you'd never look at me the same."

Clark cocked his head and turned to his side, so he was facing her. She was looking down again, so he reached out with a hand and lifted her chin.

"Nothing could do that, alright?"

She blinked and nodded. "I know." She giggled. "You're really something, you know. Never judgmental, always looking for the good in others." She stared into his deep, soulful eyes. "I think that's part of the reason I'm so intimidated by you; I feel I'll never measure up to your standards of goodness."

Clark shook his head. "I don't have a standard of goodness, Alicia. Everyone's different, and everyone is good in his or her own way. _They_ just have to see it in themselves so others can see it as well."

"But you see it no matter what."

Clark shrugged, and pursed his lips. "It's not easy, if that's what you're implying. Sometimes I have to look harder than I would with someone who isn't as complex."

"So complex people are harder to read."

"Of course they are."

"Am I complex?"

Clark paused. It felt like a trick question. "You are on some counts."

"And on others?"

Clark smiled sweetly. "On others, you're fairly transparent. But only when transparency is a good thing, really."

"So I'm transparent. That's ironic, actually; my favorite color is clear."

Clark raised an eyebrow. "Ha."

Alicia smiled – a forced, unfamiliar smile that Clark didn't like – and pulled her knees up to her chin. Taking a deep breath, she said quickly, "I got caught up in some bad things in Metropolis."

Clark nodded slowly. "Care to elaborate?"

Alicia opened her mouth, then shook her head. "This doesn't feel right."

Clark furrowed his eyebrows, but was interrupted when Alicia nudged him with her foot; when he got the idea, he stood up and allowed her to stretch out on the couch, her hands entwined and resting on her stomach. When she was finished, she smiled up at Clark and nodded. "Continue, Dr. Phil."

Clark rolled his eyes and perched atop his trunk. "Okay, elaborate. And no excuses, or I'm charging you for my services."

Alicia nodded with a fading smile and exhaled loudly. "Hmm."

"Any time you're ready."

"It's just . . . it sounds _really_ bad."

"Did you kill someone?"

"Maybe; would you look at me differently?"

"Eh. Not that I'm condoning murder, but you're not the type to go psycho-killer."

"Thanks, that means a lot."

Clark could tell she was being serious. Her eyes were trained on a rafter and her forehead was wrinkled in frustration; she pursed her lips, twitched her hands.

"What could possibly be so bad that you don't want to tell me?" _Or worse, what could I have possibly done to make you not trust me?_ He kept this worry quiet.

Suddenly she had swung her legs over the side of the couch and caught Clark's face in her hands, so that she was eye to eye with him. Surprised, but unmoving, Clark studied what was there.

Her skin was darker than it had been, as well as looking more worn, more brittle. It was a small difference, only noticeable at such a close proximity. Her eyes looked heavy, rimmed with dark circles covered expertly with makeup. She was still pretty, but there were now small lines in her skin, wrinkles in her forehead that had been permanently carved there.

Clark hadn't noticed, but Alicia had changed much more than some blonde highlights and a deeper tan. The worst part, perhaps, were her once-crystalline blue eyes; what were once so clear, so shockingly blue, were now dull, tired. They didn't have the same spark, the same twinkle of excitement.

It felt as if that part of her was gone, and it sent a chill through Clark.

Before he could ask what was really wrong, she'd leaned in and caught his lips; he moved his hands from his lap to her waist, but before he could do much more, she had pulled away, a rogue tear trail leading down her cheek.

"I'm sorry, Clark."

She slipped out of his grip quickly and easily and was out of the loft before he could react; he stood up and watched the stairs but she was long gone. The sound of her car in the lane below barely made it past his jumbled thoughts, and he collapsed on the couch, head in hands.

"So am I," he muttered roughly, to the empty loft and heartless night beyond.

-- -- --

Tobias didn't ask questions when she parked the car abruptly, dusty and streaked, and climbed out, wiping the back of her hand across he cheek to get rid of the stray trails left there. Surely her makeup had begun to smudge, and her eyes must have been red and puffy, but he took no notice; he put the keys away when Lana handed them to him and helped her sneak into the mansion unnoticed by Lewis, who was reportedly last seen in the den-which was on the far end of the castle, a safe distance away from the staircase leading to her bedroom—going over business acquisitions.

She climbed the stairs dejectedly and when she reached her bedroom, she closed and locked the door behind her, hopeful to avoid any further human interaction for the night, since she'd had her share between drunken football players and eyes so deep they'd pull any secret out with a few moment's notice . . .

This wasn't doing her any good. Any thought of the bright Pacific eyes that had almost broken through her carefully-constructed reserve earlier was bringing back either a fresh wave of tears or regret that she hadn't opened up to anyone. Damn him, with his piercing eyes and trustful features . . .

And that gaze they'd held in the truck. Lana's thoughts jumbled at the memory of it, but it felt . . . real. More real than any gaze she'd ever held with Jason. More reassuring than anything she'd ever experienced before.

Maybe it was because something lay behind those sparkling, kind eyes—a good, pure soul, kind spirit? Or was there more—much more—that he was hiding, unwilling and unable to show anyone except his closest loved ones?

Ugh. Why was she worried about it?

She plopped down on her bed and picked up her phone, which was lying in the exact spot she'd recalled earlier. The screen stated that there were two missed calls and three unanswered texts waiting for her, all from the same number.

Jason had called, first to tell her that there was a possibility that he could visit Smallville sometime, but it was still a small chance; the second, to ask worriedly why she hadn't answered her phone or the text he'd sent. The texts were all short, simple, and to the point:

_You alright? Didn't answer phone. Call back. Love._

_Lana, something wrong? Please, call. Love._

_Call me ASAP. I'm worried._

No "love" on the last. Just a short, rushed question; it was sweet enough, that Jason was worried about her, but it was lost on her through her own worries. She hit the reply button with her forefinger and typed a short, straightforward response:

_I'm fine; left my phone at home and went out. No need to worry. Sorry._

She turned her phone on silent and placed it carefully on the bedside table, next to her alarm clock. There would be no calls, coming or going, tonight; she didn't have the energy to deal with it. She was too self-involved at the moment to find the energy, either.

There was a soft knock on her door and Lana stood up slowly; if it were her father, it wouldn't go well at all. But luckily the voice on the other side belonged to Anne, an older woman who worked in the kitchen. She held a tray with a mug and a kettle on it; smiling at Lana, she told her it was hot chocolate and to feel free to leave the tray outside the door when she was finished. Lana nodded thankfully and looked at the tray wearily, with a sad memory.

It had been raining all day, a stormy, unusually cold June night just weeks before the accident. Her mom had made her hot chocolate, a favorite for chilly nights when emotional distress was at a peak. Lana had had a fight with Jason, their largest in two years of a relationship. While Lana sipped, Laura rubbed her back and murmured soft advice . . .

"_You can't take all the responsibility, Lana. He needs to do his part to reconcile what's been lost."_

_Lana set down her mug. "That's just it; I don't know what it is we've lost." She laughed humorlessly. "It seems s o. . . stupid. That we could get this far and argue about something so pointless, let everything we've worked so hard to build crash around us and just watch."_

_A ring. A stupid ring that Lana wouldn't accept. A 'token of loyalty and love,' he'd said, but to her it seemed a step she wasn't ready to take. A promise ring pledged a wedding, love, a family . . . but she couldn't do it yet. She was sixteen._

_Laura giggled. "That's what men do, darling. They evade and dismiss. What you won't apologize for, they never will, and it will either get swept under the rug or be the end of a good thing. Either way, you'll find out which way your relationship was headed before the disagreement."_

_Lana looked up at her mother, amazed. "Did you ever consider an advice column? How do you know all this?"_

_Laura's gaze had then fallen to the counter, her lips sad, as she urged Lana to go to sleep. "It's almost midnight…"_

It was the last good piece of advice Laura had given her daughter, and Lana cherished it. Perhaps that was dooming her relationship with Jason, constantly looking for signs that what they had would crumble. If it did fall apart, then who was she to say it wasn't fate?

Fate. She cursed her father for having it inscribed on a shiny black tombstone. _That wasn't fate, Dad. That was stupidity._

She kicked her shoes off and swung her legs up over the bed, lying on her side. Her lights were still on, glaring brightly off the window, the night outside making the glass a dark, ominous mirror. She closed her eyes, wishing she could just go _home._

"Lana?"

Clark was standing behind her. She spun, so she could look into those blue eyes. Or were they green? She couldn't decide.

He was smiling softly, his features even more angelic in the soft glowing light that seemed to surround him. He was inhumanly beautifully; heart-shatteringly, devastatingly divine. She blinked her eyes against the perfection. It wasn't natural, but she couldn't resist.

A strong hand reached out and she slipped hers into it; his skin was soft, warm, welcoming. His fingers enveloped hers and she followed him backwards, until he stopped and she fell into him.

His arms wrapped around her waist and picked her up slightly, so that they were face to face. With a soft, delicious sigh, he leaned forward ever so slightly . . .

Lana had never felt, never tasted anything like Clark. He was heaven; purity and perfection in a soft blue tee shirt, with lips sweeter than the sweetest fruit she'd ever dared to taste. Apple, perhaps? But better.

Forbidden fruit. That's what he was. Because a familiar voice was calling her away from Clark and his faultless kiss, one she didn't want to hear, and certainly not now.

"Lana, what are you doing?"

She turned halfheartedly to a dejected-looking Jason. _Jason?_ He was surrounded in a dull, pulsing light that didn't have half the effect Clark's had; but, of course, it was a shame to think Jason could compare to Clark in any way. "Lana, why?"

It was heartbreaking. But Lana had no choice; it was either stay with Clark and be happy or leave with Jason, wondering what would have happened next, what could have been. Just as she turned to Clark to capture his lips in hers, he shook his head and released her so she slid effortlessly to the white, bottomless floor. There she continued to fall, away from Clark and Jason both, who both watched down on her with sad eyes.

But falling wasn't so bad. It felt more like . . . flying. Or floating. Peaceful, smooth.

Until her feet hit rain-soaked concrete and she was looking onto an entirely different scene; a mangled car, an ambulance, a ragged-looking Lewis watching on, his eyes wide and his reactions slowed due to the alcohol; he sported a cut above his eye and his sweater was blood-stained – whether it was his blood or someone else's, no one was sure.

Lana watched, from a different vantage point, as her memory played out; soon enough her black BMW pulled up and she watched herself climb out, her hair flying and her face wild as she tried to push past emergency workers. "Mom!" she watched herself scream, slowly breaking down into a mess of sobs and tears. "_Mom!"_

Lana sat up with a jolt, her tee shirt sticking to her as she was damp with cold sweat, and her eyes flaring painfully to adjust to the darkness. Someone had shut them off for her since she'd fallen asleep, and the tray of hot chocolate was no longer on the table inside the door. Disoriented, Lana stood up slowly, trying to remember what had just happened in her dream. The latter part she'd never been able to forget, but the beginning was new, foreign. It scared her, and excited her at the same time.

Bu why Clark was the object of her dream wasn't clear yet, other than that she'd been thinking about him just before falling asleep . . .

She remembered the taste of his lips, and wondered if anything could possibly compare to it. It'd been her imagination working wildly in overdrive, but she couldn't keep her mind from wondering what his lips really did taste like. Could it compare? Would it be better?

She shook her head and changed into a pair of cotton pajama shorts and a white tank top, dropping her Rolling Stones shirt into the hamper. As she slid back into her bed, the last thing she saw was a flashing little red light on her phone, alerting her to a missed call, most likely from Jason. She reached over and turned the phone off with a small sigh before sinking off into a dream-cluttered sleep.

-- -- --

Sunday had been slow, and Clark was itching for a chance to get away from the chores he'd been doing. Chores didn't usually bother him—the fact that he could do two hours' work in ten minutes helped—but when there were bigger things on his mind, chores took a backseat. Jonathan had even chided him when he accidentally poured too much feed into the cows' trough and allowed the hose to run freely into the pasture, causing a large muddy mess. It was a first, and an incident that Clark rather preferred to avoid in the future.

Only one good thing had come from his uneventful weekend – his paper for honors writing was finished and ready to hand in that morning, mainly due to Chloe's organizational skills. Otherwise, Clark knew the task would have been impossible; the paper would have required complete concentration without the outline, and that was something he just couldn't do. Alicia and Lana wouldn't let him, from their own respective places in the back of his mind.

So Monday morning arose fresh and sunny, with crisp September dew on the grass and the cornstalks still growing green and eight foot tall in the fields. Harvest would be coming up sooner than anyone was ready, and Clark groaned at this thought. If his parents would have let him, he could have the whole job done within a day or two. Instead, he was confined to a large, loud, hot machine, churning out dust and dried cornstalks.

The Dodge rumbled at him when he started it, pushing it down the dirt lane and kicking up a cloud of dust behind. He passed the turn-off for Swann mansion with a pang, but didn't look at it; he kept his eyes trained on the road ahead, not glancing in his rearview mirror when the sound of a small car pulled out onto the lane behind him. _Concentration._ He'd need it to get through the school day.

He reached Smallville High within ten minutes, pulling into a parking space beside a yellow Cobalt and pulling out the key. As the engine purred to a halt, he turned to see Lana's little black BMW pulling into the space directly behind his. She pulled her bag off the passenger seat and got out of the car, straightening out her shirt as she stood. She was dressed in a green Henley with a white tank top beneath; even from a distance Clark noticed how the green of her shirt offset her hazel eyes. He had to tear his eyes away from her before she caught him.

Chloe made it easier.

"Clark!"

He turned and was almost hit in the face with a yellow folder. Raising an eyebrow and taking it from her, he studied its contents. Random newspaper clippings, a few Post-It's with untidy scrawl across them, a crumpled piece of paper, and an official-looking document with a bunch of numbers on it.

"What is this?"

"Evidence! I did the research part, you get started on development."

"Development of what, Chloe? This is a random assortment of crap."

"A theory. There's a method to my madness, Clark, trust me. I'll explain during fourth period."

She took back the folder and walked alongside him, glancing over at Lana, and then back at him. Lana was busy on her phone, which had just rung a few moments ago. Currently she was whispering hurriedly into it, seemingly trying to convince whomever was on the other end that she couldn't talk.

"I'm at school! . . . . Yes, really, I'm in the parking lot! . . . Why would I _lie_ about that? . . . You're being ridiculous. I'll call you after _school_," she said, rolling her eyes as she shoved keys into purse. "Yes. Bye . . .. You, too. Bye."

Clark looked away before Lana punched the end button aggressively, but Chloe hadn't. When Lana looked up, she smiled sheepishly at Chloe. "Hey."

Chloe grinned and nodded. "Hey, Lana. What was that about?"

Clark closed his eyes. Chloe was never one to recognize personal boundaries.

"Oh, just . . . you know guys. When you don't call them back, they freak out."

Clark's eyes had flown open at the word "guys," and he'd craned his neck around to peer at Lana for a split-second. _Guy? As in, boyfriend guy?_

Chloe glanced up at Clark and then laughed. "I always heard it was the other way around, you know, with girls doing the overreacting."

Lana shrugged and raised an eyebrow. "I always had too, until I met Jason." She laughed quietly and then looked over Chloe's head at Clark. "Good morning, Clark."

He offered her a small smile and nodded. "'Morning, Lana."

Chloe looked at them both before disguising a giggle as a cough and turning back to Lana. "What class do you have first hour?"

Lana went off into an explanation of her schedule, but Clark zoned out. Guy. Specifically, Jason. He groaned inwardly. Not that he'd really weighed it as an option, but he hadn't even _thought_ about a boyfriend in the picture. But of course, that was stupidity on his part; Lana was sure to have _someone_ she called her own; she was much too beautiful to go unnoticed, too beautiful to _not_ have a boyfriend.

Then Clark felt stupid. He was jealous because a girl he'd known less than a day had a boyfriend already. A girl he barely knew, had only talked to for a grand total of, at most, twenty minutes . . .

"Earth to Clark."

He blinked. "Yeah?"

"You can show Lana to first hour English, right? It's your first class too."

He swallowed and then nodded. "Uh, yeah, no problem."

Lana glanced up at him again. "How is Labsforth?"

Clark shrugged. "He's alright, but he loves Shakespeare. Sometimes keeping up with his comparisons to Hamlet and the Capulets is harder than actually reading the stuff without a translator."

Lana perked up and grinned. "Shakespeare's my favorite."

Chloe grinned. "I think we have Labsforth's new teacher's pet on our hands."

Lana blushed as Clark held the door open for them; they continued to explain classes and teachers to Lana—Chloe doing most of the talking—before they reached a teal-green door with a small gold plaque on it that read THE TORCH. Chloe stopped and pulled out a key. As she opened the door, she bowed to Clark and Lana. "I take my leave." She pointed at Clark. "Fourth hour."

He nodded and turned to Lana. "Did you need to go to a locker or something?"

She nodded and held out her paper; Clark glanced down and quickly spotted the locker number. "309 . . . that's just around the corner. Come on."

He led her down the hallway, past giggling freshmen loitering in the halls and football players guffawing loudly. Clark noticed Whitney Fordman to his left, getting ready to shout something crude at Lana, but with a fierce glare, Fordman backed down.

They rounded the corner and located the right locker; when Lana looked at the lock, then at him, a confused look in her eyes, Clark sidestepped the minefield.

"It's your birthday."

She nodded and spun the dial quickly; he didn't watch but listened for the click of the gears working to unlock, hoping it worked. When three clicks sounded—with help of super hearing—and she pulled up on the little button, the door popped open to reveal the inside of the empty yellow locker.

She quickly and efficiently pulled books out of her bag and lined them up in her locker, leaving the English text out. When she'd closed the door, she turned to Clark.

"Ready."

He nodded and led her down the hallway, turning left up a stairway. They pushed past a group of girls wearing cheerleading outfits, a few of whom turned to study Lana with looks that even Clark could translate: they either screamed jealousy, or inexplicable loathing for the beautiful new girl. The only thing Clark didn't know was that half that jealousy and hatred was because Lana's personal tour guide was none other than Kent himself.

When Lana noticed the prickly glares, she cleared her throat and prodded Clark in the back lightly, urging him faster. When they reached the top of the stairs, Lana rolled her eyes.

"Another reason not to join the cheer squad."

Clark chuckled, but then stopped. Was it safe to assume that she'd forgotten about Saturday night? Or was she trying avoiding the subject just as deftly as he was? Lana noticed his contemplative state and took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry about the other night."

From her hesitant tone, Clark guessed the latter. He furrowed his eyebrows and shrugged with one shoulder. "Don't worry about it."

"No, I was really pretty sour about the whole thing."

He shook his head. "Not really; you were protecting your right to privacy. If there's anyone who understands that, it's me."

Lana gazed up at him as they walked. He was looking at the posters hanging from the walls, touting pep rallies, clubs and organizations, and Homecoming, which was apparently coming up next month. For some reason, she didn't question him. He had an air of knowing more than he should, of having to hide a secret. She wondered vaguely if he'd ever trust her enough to confide in her, if she couldn't confide in him?

He looked down and caught her gaze, and again, she was trapped. His eyes pulled her in, making it impossible to look away, or even dream of doing so. God, how was it possible one person could possess all the beauty and the quiet power he seemed to? And so effortlessly, as if he didn't even know it.

He blinked and she looked away. Shaking his head, he pointed at a door to their right, in front of which a group of students was standing, leaning against the walls and talking about plans; for weekend parties, for school-night parties, for parties right after school. Clark shook his head as they pushed passed the group and into the classroom. The curse of a small town was that all the teens turned into alcoholics, for lack of more interesting things to do. Good thing Clark never had that problem—he was too busy thwarting misguided meteor-infectees to bother. Besides, he was fairly sure the stuff wouldn't affect him, and there didn't seem to be a point in wasting his time or money.

Clark put his books down at his regular table and sat down on the stool, but with a quick glance realized that Lana was standing just inside the door, hesitant. When he furrowed his eyebrows at her, she shrugged. "Where should I…?"

Clark grinned and motioned to the seat right beside him; his table only had two people, and they were Pete and himself. Lana slipped gracefully onto the stool in front of him, pulling out the text and a notebook and pen. When she was done, she leaned on the table with an elbow, her chin resting on her fist as she looked down at the spiral binding of her purple notebook.

"So, I take it you don't like Shakespeare." When Clark gave her a confused look, she shrugged. "'Sometimes keeping up with his comparisons to Hamlet and the Capulets is harder than actually reading the stuff without a translator'?"

Clark nodded and grinned. "All those 'hath's' and 'doth's' and 'thee's' and thou's' get kind of confusing after four or five pages."

Lana giggled. "You just need to have a good grip on metaphors." When Clark grimaced, she smiled wider. _"Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid, art far more fair than she."_

Clark stared at her, befuddled. "That's . . . nice."

She giggled again. "It's Romeo; he was always quite the romantic, no?" When Clark's eyes glazed over in puzzlement, she rolled her eyes with a smile. "What does that mean to you? How do you understand it?"

Clark tried to remember what she'd quoted, but was finding that the _way_ she'd quoted was sticking rather than the actual words. _Sun killing the moon, who is jealous of a fair…_

"I honestly don't know what to tell you."

"Because you're picturing the sun wielding an axe and murdering the moon, right?"

Clark nodded; Lana's nose crinkled in silent laughter.

"That's the curse of teenage boys; they're all too violent and literal. Romeo wasn't referring to the sun actually killing the moon; it was a metaphor. When Juliet appears on her balcony, she appears like the sun at dawn, her light overpowering the moon's merely reflected brilliance. Romeo can't help but be entranced."

Clark nodded. "And he couldn't just tell her she was beautiful?"

"Then it wouldn't be as romantic."

Clark furrowed his eyebrows to respond, but was interrupted my Mr. Labsforth, who called the class into submission just as the bell rang and Pete slipped into his seat beside Clark. He gave Clark an arrogant smile and turned to Labsforth, who was asking for their papers. Clark passed his forward and noticed a piece of paper slid towards him, with loopy handwriting on it.

_How would you tell a girl she was beautiful? Just give her a pie?_

Clark had to stifle a laugh as he pulled out a pen. _No, fresh chocolate chip cookies. _He pushed the paper back to her, watching as her nose crinkled again and she scribbled out a reply. This was much better than instant messaging or texting. She pushed the paper back towards him.

_Pies are much better._

_Is it really about pies? I thought it was about romanticism._

_It is. But do pies compare to cookies? Flaky, fruity and sugary vs. floury, crumbly, and chocolaty?_

_Is 'chocolaty' a word?_

_Of course it is._

_Well, then, I guess pies are better. But I still don't get it._

Lana frowned at him, as if trying to communicate the point through telepathy. When he raised his eyebrows and shrugged, she leaned over the paper. A half-minute later, she pushed it across the Formica towards him.

_Romeo preferred pies, too. It wasn't enough to just say, "Juliet is so beautiful, nothing could compare;" it had much more effect to compare her to the moon, the epitome of beauty. He saw Juliet as his light; at the Capulet's ball, he mentioned that she taught the torch to burn bright. When he poisoned himself because Juliet was 'dead,' he said the light had been extinguished._

_And that's romantic._

_Isn't it?_

Clark looked up at her; she was looking at the paper, her eyes studying all the words there. As if she could feel his gaze, she looked up at him, her eyes portraying her belief in her theory. Clark sighed.

_I guess. So you're saying every girl would rather have a pie than a cookie._

Lana smiled. _Absolutely._

_Then I guess I'm not a very romantic person._

_Don't worry; everyone has the capability, they just need the desire and the right person to bring it out._

Clark read this line four times before Labsforth's voice broke through his thoughts and broke his concentration on her loopy scrawl.

"Mr. Kent, maybe you can tell us."

He blinked. _Crap!_ The one time he didn't care to pay attention, he was called on. He looked at Lana, who was watching him, amused. Pete was shaking with invisible giggles.

"Um. . . I'm s-sorry, Mr. Labsforth. . ."

"Pay attention next time, Mr. Kent. Can anyone tell us what point Hawthorne was trying to convey in _The Scarlet Letter?_ What was the idea?"

Lana's hand rose timidly when no one else's did. Labsforth pointed at her, and she took a deep breath.

"Hawthorne's central idea was the analysis of hidden sin and exposed sin." She stopped there, but it was apparent that she knew much more.

Labsforth crossed his arms across his chest and sat on his desk. "Go on."

"Well . . . Hester's scarlet 'A' allowed her to move on with her life; she wasn't bound by this secret that she had sinned, that she'd committed adultery. She could live her life as freely as her punishment would allow; it even became a legend, of sorts, that the 'A' allowed her to possess the ability to help people." She paused, taking a deep breath. "However, because Dimmesdale kept his part of the secret hidden, it slowly ate away at him. He couldn't live, because he couldn't be free. The same predicament held true for Chillingworth. Their secrets eventually killed them, or turned them evil, in Chillingworth's case."

Labsforth stared at her proudly. "Miss Lang, is it?"

Lana nodded silently. Every student in the room was watching her, as if she'd grown horns.

"Welcome to Smallville, Miss Lang." He offered her a small smile before turning to the whiteboard and writing, in large black letters, _PEARL: The effects of hidden and exposed sin on the product of the initial sin._

Clark put his pen back to the paper. He could risk not paying attention. _How do you know all that?_

_Advanced placement program. Literature, English, and writing were my forte at Excelsior._

Clark shook his head. _English nerd,_ he scribbled, and stuck his tongue out at her as he passed it across.

_Flannel king._

He frowned at her. _If you're going to be mean, I'm not replying._

_You already have._

After her last statement, she'd scrawled a little smiley face of sorts; a capital 'X', followed by a capital 'P'. When he looked up at her, she clenched her eyes shut and stuck out her tongue, causing him to laugh out loud.

"Kent!"

He swiftly tucked the note into his pocket and waited for Labsforth to bear down on him. "May I ask what's so funny? I wasn't under the impression that the effect of her mother's secrecy and her unknown father on little Pearl was particularly hilarious."

Lana spoke up. "I'm sorry, Mr. Labsforth, it was my fault."

Labsforth's frosty gaze turned to his newest student, disappointment littering his expression. "Your fault, Miss Lang? How so?"

Clark glared at her, willing her to stop with his eyes, which were smoldering at her.

"I was explaining to him the scene where Pearl throws cockleburs at Dimmesdale. My description caused him to laugh."

Labsforth backed off a little, but still threw a dirty look at Clark, who sank down as low as his stool would allow, his cheeks blushing furiously.

When the bell rang, roughly half an hour later, Clark followed Lana out into the hall, who started laughing once they were free of the classroom. Clark glared at her as they walked.

"I'll have you know, that's the first time I've gotten yelled at in a class."

"Ever?"

"Ever."

"Geesh, Clark. Loosen up a bit. Life's no fun if you don't get into a bit of trouble."

Pete had followed them and caught Clark by the back of his shirt, slowing him down. Lana continued to walk, and Pete hit Clark on the shoulder.

"Dude, what _happened?_"

Clark furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"I thought Alicia came back to town. What happened to her? Why are you and Lang so close?"

Clark rolled his eyes and began to walk again. "I don't know what you're talking about. She was explaining Shakespeare to me."

A loud and implicative "Oooooooh" from behind him caused him to stop abruptly, so that Pete ran into his elbow. Pete made a whooshing sound as the air got knocked out of his lungs.

"Nothing happened, okay? You're turning into Chloe."

Through his gasps for air, Pete managed to get out, "That's low, man."

Clark rolled his eyes and continued down the stairs. When they reached Lana's locker, she closed the door and turned around.

"What class do you have now?" he asked, while Pete tagged along like a lost puppy. Lana grimaced.

"Calculus."

Clark grinned. "You're waltzing into my territory, now."

Pete stared, wide-eyed, at his friend. "When people start talking math, I'm out."

He passed them and continued to the hallway with a wave. Lana watched him go before turning back to Clark.

"So you have Calculus, too?"

Clark nodded. "Follow me, English Nerd. You're about to see how the Math Master does work."

The math lab was full of long tables, much like the ones in the English room, and the ones in the science lab. In fact, a lot of classes had lab tables, only four or five having actual desks. Clark hadn't ever thought about it, but Lana pointed it out quickly.

"Did your school get a deal on lab tables or something?" Looking around at the gray-topped tables lined with stools, she added, "Buy five, get fifty free?"

"No, actually, there was a sale on gray Formica. Compared to the blue, they just couldn't sell it." Spiky blonde hair bopped past them to stand in front of Clark, smiling. "Pell wouldn't accept the, 'the Torch deadline is tomorrow and I'm swamped' excuse again, so I'm forced to join you all in the math lab today." She grimaced at Clark. "If you help me pass today, I'll let you off lunch duty."

Clark rolled his eyes. When Lana furrowed her eyebrows at them, Chloe explained.

"Clark writes the lunch menus for the school paper. Mainly because he lacks the talent required for writing anything decent enough to publish to the public."

Clark grinned at her acerbically. "Thanks, Chloe. I appreciate it."

She beamed a hundred-watt smile and turned to bebop towards the lab table Clark usually occupied. There were only four seats at this one, rather than six. Which meant there were fewer people asking if they could get his answers, since they'd been forbidden from walking around. Clark had to hand it to Mr. Pell; the man was observant, and the latest rule saved Clark from becoming the Homework Help Hotline.

Lana took the seat across from Chloe, toying with the supply baskets in the middle of the table; lined up in a neat row were little plastic baskets, each one holding a different mathematical device; one held rulers, another held compasses; there were graphing calculators in one (some parents had refused to spend up to a hundred bucks on a calculator, so the school had funded them for students without), and graph paper in another.

"Clark, I was wondering when I'd… see… you . . ."

Clark spun; behind him was a blonde ponytail and a blue sweater that highlighted blue eyes – still dull, but as if sleep had made them a little brighter. Only marginally, but enough that they didn't seem hollow, at least.

"Hi, Alicia."

But Alicia's eyes were trained on Lana, who hadn't noticed; she was digging around in her bag.

"Chloe, do you have a pencil I could borrow? I lost mine somewhere between English and note-passing with . . ."

Lana had looked up by now, and was caught in Alicia's gaze. With a deep breath and sticking her chin up slightly, as if re-asserting her independence to someone who was threatening to take it away, she grinned tightly. "Hello, Alicia."

Alicia's head cocked to the side; Clark was watching the exchange nervously, ready to interject if they pounced on each other, which, with the icy tension between them, felt imminent.

"Lana. I didn't know you were moving to Smallville." With a small smirk, she narrowed her eyes. "How quaint."

Lana smiled wider; it seemed she was trying to counter sass with sugar. "Small town air could do a soul good. I see you thought the same – good idea."

Alicia's eyes narrowed further still, so that Clark wondered if she could see anything. Laughing nervously and standing up, he offered Alicia his seat – allowing her to sit next to Lana seemed to be a bad idea. A very bad idea. "Uh, Alicia, it seems I don't, er, have to introduce you to Lana . . .?"

He looked at Chloe for help, but she was grinning wildly. Chloe liked no entertainment better than free entertainment, and a catfight would definitely qualify.

Hopefully Clark could avoid that.

Alicia slipped carefully onto Clark's abandoned seat and watched him carefully as he took the one next to Lana. Lana watched too, and when Clark was settled, she turned to him, assumedly doing her best to ignore the long blonde on the other side. "Have you got a pencil I could borrow, Clark?"

He nodded and pushed a red mechanical towards her. She grinned in thanks and opened her book, looking over the material. Alicia took her silence as an opportunity, and offered Clark a sickly sweet smile. One Clark didn't like.

"So, Mr. Kent," she said, her voice dripping with unfamiliar honey. _This is certainly not the same Alicia Baker,_ Clark thought ruefully. "What do you say about picking up your old position as Calculus tutor?" She batted her eyelashes, and he heard Lana snort beside him—a small, unassuming sound he was sure neither Chloe nor Alicia had heard.

"Uh, I dunno, Alicia. Harvest is coming up…"

"Harvest isn't for another month, doof."

"I still have to get ready. The John Deere hasn't run in weeks and the International gave up completely, Dad said there's no chance of fixing it without a hefty wallet."

Alicia rolled her eyes. "Farmers."

Chloe turned to Alicia. "Someone's gotta do some work around here."

"Hey, Chloe."

"How was Metropolis?"

"It was alright, a little loud…"

The two girls sank into a discussion of Metropolis life; Chloe exclaiming her desire to live there and Alicia shooting down all Chloe's aspirations with the gritty truth.

"The subways are so _manky._"

"Aww, really?"

Clark zoned out from the girl talk and pulled out his and Lana's note from earlier. Pulling out a pen, he quickly scrawled: _How do you and Alicia know each other?_

Lana glanced at it, reading it before he'd finished writing. She shook her head, and Clark took it to mean she'd explain later.

Mr. Pell started class a few minutes later, and thankfully Clark was absorbed enough in the subject matter that his worries about Alicia and Lana and catfights and conflicting feelings were all a non-issue. He took careful notes, knowing most of the lesson already, but keeping up just in case.

Mr. Pell's voice dragged a bit, but Clark didn't notice through the numbers. In fact, most of the students complained about sleepiness and the inability to pay attention. It was easy to spot at lease three pairs of eyes floating off into some far away place that had nothing to do with Smallville High and Calculus class.

When Mr. Pell's lecturing stopped and they were given free time to work on homework, Lana looked up at Clark, a hopeless look in her eyes, before glancing down at his tedious notes.

"How do you do that?"

"He's a genius." Chloe was rereading her scattered notes carefully, trying to sort out the derivatives and logarithms.

Clark shook his head. "I'm not a genius."

"Yes, you are." Chloe grinned up at them both. Alicia, who had fallen asleep on her arms, blinked and straightened up. "You get straight A's in classes no one else can even begin to comprehend, you're all the teacher's favorite student—"

"Eh, not so much Labsforth anymore." When Chloe's eyes widened, Clark shrugged. "I guess he was offended when I laughed during his lecture on Pearl. Whatever Pearl is."

"Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale's illegitimate daughter."

Clark gave Lana a sardonic look before turning back to Chloe. "And you're making it seem worse than it is. I just pay attention."

"Sure helps to have a photographic _and_ audio-graphic memory. I still wonder why you even take notes."

He raised his eyebrows at Chloe, who noticed a moment too late that she'd let something slip that Lana maybe shouldn't have known. Lana turned to him.

"Photographic memory, huh."

"Uh, yeah."

"Impressive."

He shook his head again and bent over his homework. He began writing out numbers and equations, his hand and mind going so fast that Lana and Chloe couldn't keep up. Chloe frowned.

"What's that say?" she asked, pointing at a scribbled line upside down and pursing her lips.

"A function **f** is differentiable at **x = a** if and only if **f** has both a right-hand derivative and a left-hand derivative at **x = a** and both of these derivatives are equal."

Chloe furrowed her eyebrows. "And that means something?"

"It's a corollary."

"Ooooh-kay."

Chloe's pencil dropped to the table and she closed her notebook; Mr. Pell gave her a short glance but didn't bother to reprimand her.

Lana was tapping her borrowed pencil on the edge of the desk, frowning at her notes. Alicia kept glancing at her across the table, annoyance apparent in her eyes. Lana didn't seem to notice; that, or she had noticed, and didn't care. Either way, Clark knew the situation was going way downhill when Alicia's head snapped up to glare at Lana.

"Do you _mind?_"

Lana paused mid-tap and laid her pencil down carefully. Her voice was quiet, but gave Clark chills.

"I'm sorry, your majesty. May I get you anything else? Tylenol for your hangover, maybe?"

Alicia's tone jumped an octave in bitterness. "I'm not hung over."

Lana grinned. "That's a first. You've joined an AA group, then?"

Chloe, sensing a display of claws, took evasive action. She captured Alicia's attention—which proved rather difficult, considering her blue gaze was locked fiercely on Lana's hazel one—and began asking her more questions about Metropolis.

"Where'd you go to school? I heard MHS has a nice facility."

Alicia's expression still read _loathing_. "I went to Excelsior."

Chloe's eyebrows widened, and he mouth opened in a small "o" of surprise. "Excelsior? But they're really esteemed . . . only take on the best."

Alicia shot her a withering gaze and closed her books, packing them into her bag quickly. She hopped from her stool and approached Mr. Pell; Clark, Chloe, and Lana all watched her carefully.

"I'm not feeling well. May I go to the office?"

Pell granted her request and Alicia pushed out the door, not glancing backward at any of them. When the door had swung shut again, Chloe turned to Clark and Lana, grinning.

"Did I say something?"

Clark didn't answer; he had turned to Lana, who was raised her eyebrows at him.

"Excelsior?"

"Yeah. Alicia Baker never was the type I could really get along with well."

Chloe stopped them. "That's an understatement. What I want to know is what caused her the desire to send you telepathic death wishes."

Lana shrugged. "She never had the ability to tell herself to butt out of other's business. And it didn't help that she came to school drunk a lot of times."

Clark choked. "Drunk? _Alicia?_"

Lana nodded. "She always smelled like Schnapps. Eventually she started disappearing from classes and lunch hour. When she got kicked out—"

When Chloe and Clark both made sounds of disbelief, Lana stopped. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you."

Chloe glared at her. "No, no, go on! You're getting to the good part! Goody-goody Alicia got kicked _out_?"

Lana clamped her hand over her mouth and shook her head. Clark's thoughts spun.

So Alicia had become an alcoholic and had been expelled from Excelsior. He was disappointed in her, but most of all he felt sorry for her. Clark knew Alicia's father was distant; he was far from unloving, but he seemed to think money equaled happiness, and therefore Alicia had no real reason to be _un_happy. He blamed her father more than Alicia herself, for not being there when his daughter needed him. Perhaps the situation could have been avoided…

Chloe had urged Lana to continue. "She was rumored to have bought her way into school. God knows she didn't have the grades to keep up. She was failing five of eight classes before they expelled her."

Clark cleared his throat. "Maybe Lana was right, this doesn't seem right."

Chloe frowned at him and showed all signs of arguing, but he held her off with a hand. "Just drop it, Chloe."

Chloe's face fell and she snapped her book shut loudly. "Fine. But if Lana can't tell me now I'll drag it out of her later."

Lana giggled embarrassedly, but soon fell quiet. She felt horrible; Alicia was apparently a friend of Clark's, and though Lana couldn't personally stand her, a friend of Clark's couldn't be all bad.

_Tell that to the girls she ruined at Excelsior. Boyfriends, best friends, booze. Any and all things left in her wake were or should be declared a disaster zone._

_Hurricane Alicia. Ha. It suits her._

She told her subconscious—the part that hated Alicia with all her being—to shut up and behave. She wasn't sure how she could hate someone so much—they'd only known each other a few short months.

But then again, a few moments could change everything. Why not months?

The bell broke them all out of their individual reminisces and they packed up quickly, making it out of the door close to the front of the herd of students pushing and pulling, avoiding the worst of the mosh pit.

As they walked through the hall, they were all rather unusually quiet. Chloe walked between Lana and Clark, both of whom looked very distant; Clark's eyes were unfocused and trained on the floor just a half-foot beyond where his feet landed with each step; Lana, clutching her books tightly and glaring at some spot straight ahead of her. Finally, Chloe cracked.

"Someone speak, so I don't think I've completely lost my mind."

Clark blinked and looked down at her; she was twirling a pencil expertly between her fingers like a miniature baton, a nervous habit of hers. "Calm down, Chlo. That'll be the fifth pencil you've broken in a month."

She glared up at him and tucked the pencil behind her ear.

When they reached the cafeteria five minutes later, Clark glanced around quickly; it was full of loud, boisterous students; some were pushing one another out of line, others were arguing and negotiating over the last apple. But there was no sign of Alicia, and Clark wondered where she'd gone. Was she still in the office? Had she gone home, sick? Or was what Lana said true, and she'd snuck off somewhere…?

Clark refused to believe the worst in people. Assuming one of the first two options was correct and pushing all thoughts about it out of his mind, he joined the line with Chloe and Lana, listening dejectedly as they reassumed their discussion over classes and teachers from early that morning.

When they'd each received their trays—Lana had opted for only a salad, as the tuna casserole looked rather mysterious and she wasn't in the mood for food poisoning—they found Pete at a table, already finishing his tuna and digging into a thick piece of chocolate cake.

Chloe stared at him in disgust.

"Wha'?" he said, his mouth open, chocolate icing clinging to his lip.

"Pig," she said, enunciating very clearly. Pete rolled his eyes and washed his cake down with milk.

"So," he said, grinning up at Lana and Clark. "How was Calculus? Did Clark show off his super math abilities?"

Clark smirked at him before placing his tray on the table and sliding into the seat. Chloe had claimed the one next to Pete, so Lana was sitting next to Clark.

Then a couple of loud jocks sat on Clark's left, forcing him to scoot over to avoid squishing any of them. Which put Clark and Lana close. Almost uncomfortably close.

Clark's arms were pinned at his side awkwardly, making it difficult for him to raise his fork to his mouth. Lana, trying to avoid falling off the end of the bench and onto the floor, pushed herself back farther onto the seat, causing her arm to brush across Clark's. And they both jumped.

Because when Lana's soft, bronze skin made contact with Clark's, they'd both felt it. The jolt of electricity. The initial shock, much like touching a TV screen after dragging one's socks across the carpet. Not unpleasant, just strange. And it had run up the length of their arms, straight to each of their chests. They both turned to look at each other at the same moment, eyes wide in surprise.

"I'm sorry," they both said, small smiles claiming each set of lips. Clark shook his head slightly, never breaking eye contact.

To be truthful, it was the first time Clark had ever felt a jolt of any kind of electricity. Usually it was just redirected to whatever was closest to him, traveling through his body but never affecting him. The lightning strike in his freshman year had been painful, but not from the electricity; kryptonite had been the culprit there, a piercing, stabbing, horrible pain that he felt whenever the stuff was around. There was no mistaking that. And he could think of no other feeling like the one he'd just received from the feel of Lana's skin.

It was . . . exhilarating.

He watched Lana carefully, his expression somewhat amused. Lana's brow creased in confusion, and she giggled uncertainly.

"Are you alright, Clark?"

He was aware that Pete and Chloe were still sitting across from them, watching him worriedly. _Damn_. He cleared his throat.

"Yeah. I'm fine." With a small confused look, he said, "That was weird."

Weird wasn't the word for it. Through all the things he'd experienced—meteor freaks, three headed cows, body snatchers—nothing compared to the feeling he'd just received from the mere hint of Lana's skin on his. It taunted him; he wasn't used the experience, but so thoroughly wanted to become accustomed to it. He wanted to feel her skin, feel that shock of electricity—of pure, unadulterated chemistry in its purest, rawest form—as he studied those hazel eyes and the secrets they held. Because he could get lost in those orbs. He feared that one day he _would_ become lost in her gaze, and wouldn't realize it.

She nodded slowly, her eyes still trained on him. "Yeah."

Chloe cleared her throat, and Lana blinked. "Well, as interesting as this is, the Torch is calling me," she said dramatically, standing up and taking her tray with her. Before she left, she nudged Pete with the toe of her shoe and he stood up too.

"Yeah, Torch stuff," he said, looking at Clark, bewildered. "See you next hour?"

Clark nodded, then looked down at his tray, his cheeks growing warm.

Alone. His friends had left him alone. Well, there were a bunch of rowdy jocks to his left. And a beautiful, unbidden, unavailable girl on his right.

He'd need all the strength in the entire known universe to survive to fourth hour free period.

-- -- --

Clark all but collapsed into his favorite spinny chair, his head hitting the headrest and his eyes sliding closed. A long, loud sigh of relief slid past his lips—white, from being bitten—and his arms fell to his sides. _Relaxation._

_Thank god._

"Whoa."

His eyes snapped open to Pete standing over him, waving a hand back and forth across his vision. "You 'kay?"

Clark shrugged and fell back to his relaxed position. "Dunno."

The door banged open again and Chloe staked through, her hands full of folders containing notes, pictures, articles, copies, bios, Post It notes, and anything else she'd gotten her hands on over the past week. Under her arm was tucked a yellow folder, along with a few stray copies of last week's Torch.

Once she spotted Clark, however, she dropped everything on the nearest desk, sending up a small flurry of peppermint wrappers, Post It's, and corners of papers with numbers and names written on them. Chloe ignored the messy blizzard and watched Clark.

"What happened?"

Clark sat up and buried his head in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees. His reply was mumbled beyond recognition.

"Okay, Clark?" Chloe said, perching herself on the edge of the desk and crossing her arms. Clark looked up at her. She pointed between herself and Pete. "_We_ don't have superhearing."

He exhaled through his nose and shook his head. "Nothing happened."

Pete furrowed his eyebrows. "But—"

"No, honestly, _nothing _happened." He looked up at them both imploringly. "We barely talked. She didn't eat anything. We barely _looked_ at each other." When Pete raised his eyebrows at him, he reiterated, "_Nothing._"

The fact was, Clark had spent most of the lunch hour chewing on his lips, willing something semi-decent to come to his tongue, but nothing did. Just stupid comments like, "that salad looks good," or "this tuna tastes like sand." And he'd have smacked himself for saying that, let alone would Chloe.

Chloe, who was grinning at him like a fool.

"What?" he said, aggravated. He didn't find it funny. He'd found it rather maddening, having a lovely girl beside him that he couldn't talk to and that wouldn't talk to him. Perhaps the greatest torture he'd ever endured.

Her lips curled even more, her green eyes glittering. "You _have_ to know."

He raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and shook his head. "Know _what_, Chloe?"

She giggled. "You're so clueless sometimes, Clark."

Pete nodded.

Clark shook his head. "Okay, just spill what you know."

"Not just what I know. What everybody who's been paying attention knows." She pulled a square piece of paper out of her pocket and unfolded it, waving it in front of him. He recognized the two types of handwriting and caught a glimpse of the words.

Words he and Lana had written earlier that morning in English.

He was quicker than she; he reached out and snatched the paper away, leaving in intact. He folded it and glared at her. "Where did you get this? It was in my pocket." Last he'd checked, Chloe couldn't pick pockets.

She shrugged, unabashed. "It was on the ground at lunch. I picked up out of pure curiosity, but when I realized what it was, I figured you wouldn't want anyone else getting their hands on it." By the way his cheeks turned pink, she assumed she was correct.

"Yeah, Well," he said, tucking it in his front pocket of his jeans. "Thanks, I guess. Although I don't appreciate you reading our private conversation."

Chloe grinned and shook her head. "What a conversation it was. I doubt you saw it, but that thing was riddled with double meanings."

Clark shook his head. "No. You may have read deeper into it, but we were merely discussing Shakespeare."

"Just so happens that Shakespeare is one of the most romantic writers, huh?"

"Drop it, Chloe."

She held up her hands. "Fine. But there will come a time when I can safely say 'I told you so,' and you will not refrain me from doing so." She raised her eyebrows at him before sliding off the desk and tossing him the yellow folder. "There. Look through that again."

He flipped it open and was confronted with a picture of a bald man in a dark suit; he was smiling for the camera, purely a public relations shot. He was no older than twenty-five, but his posture and his dress told Clark he was and had been in the business world for a long time. Clark looked up at Chloe, waving the picture. "Who's this?"

"Lex Luthor," she said, unwrapping a peppermint—her number one concentration treat in the office. "Twenty-two, single, and inheritor of the Luthor fortune." At the look on Clark's face that told him he had a semi-formed connection, she sighed and popped the mint in her mouth before giving him a 'go-ahead' gesture with her hand. "First thing that came to mind."

Clark furrowed his eyebrows even further. "Luthor sounds familiar."

"That's because he's the very Luthor of LuthorCorp. Actually, he's working on a subsidiary called LexCorp. They started out with fertilizer but under Lex's reign had reached out to public works—building housing shelters, donating money to disaster funds—and creating military programs and weapons. The ultimate monopolizing power in the corporate world."

Clark continued to flip through the folder. Beneath the picture was a short article about a LuthorCorp project being abandoned due to a 'tragic malfunction.' Beneath that was an obituary.

_Lionel Luthor, CEO and founder of LuthorCorp based in Metropolis, was killed early Saturday morning, May 17__th__, at 6:38 am when the small, private-owned jet Luthor was traveling in mysteriously crashed near the Panama Canal zone. The reason for the accident is unknown, and efforts to salvage the wreckage have been halted as no survivors are believed to remain. Small pieces of the wreckage have turned up on shore, but nothing conducive to the investigation. Luthor was 59 and is survived by son, Alexander._

Clark flipped the obituary over, looking for a year, but didn't find one; on the opposite side was a Classified ad calling for a trained massage therapist. He waved it at Chloe.

"When was this?"

"Last spring," she said, not looking up from her organizing task; she was transferring articles from folders into other ones, filing documents in the file cabinets painted with a huge, colorful crow carrying a lighted torch. Clark looked back down at the article for a moment, before continuing through the folder.

There were articles upon articles, all clipped from the Daily Planet, informing readers about new projects, old projects, abandoned projects, and successful projects (although, Clark could already see, there were more of the former than the latter). There were articles about the Luthors at charity events, and more recent articles about Lex donating millions to charity, scholarship funds, the building of schools in third-world countries, and an unimaginable amount invested in the military.

Then there were pictures, explanations of Greek mythology; pictures of Prometheus, Athena, Zeus, and others he didn't recognize. Beneath the picture of Aphrodite was a biography of sorts of Epimetheus, reading:

_Epimetheus was a stupid Titan, whose name means "afterthought". In some accounts he is delegated, along with his brother Prometheus by Zeus, to create mankind by assigning traits and genes. He also accepted the gift of Pandora from Zeus, which lead to the introduction of evil into the world._

Furrowing his eyebrows, Clark laid down the folder and logged onto the computer in front of him. Pete came up from behind, watching as Clark pulled up a search engine and typed in Epimetheus. Clicking on the first link, he waited for he page to load.

When it finally did, Pete frowned at the Wikipedia page devoted to Epimetheus. "Dude, don't trust that site."

Clark frowned up at him. "Why?"

Pete simply shook his head. Chloe answered for him.

"Because he tried to 'paraphrase' from it for a history assignment and got busted. Apparently the war of 1812 didn't start in 1816."

Clark sniggered at Pete before returning his attention to the web page. "I'll take my chances with Epimetheus."

Chloe looked up from her filing. "Epimetheus? If you're looking up the project, you won't find it online." She closed the file drawer. "It's confidential."

Clark raised his eyebrows at her. "And you found out about it, how, exactly?"

She shrugged and mumbled something about 'stumbling on it' before raising her tone. "Read it aloud."

He cleared his throat, his eyes skimming the passage. "Epimetheus was the brother of Prometheus, a pair of titans who 'acted as representatives of mankind.' They were the inseparable sons of Iapetus . . . While Prometheus is characterized as ingenious and clever, Epimetheus is depicted as foolish."

Chloe nodded and came to stand behind Clark. "Yeah, yeah, I could have told you as much." She leaned over him slightly, reading the article herself. "It says that according to Plato, the twins were in charge of giving traits to newly-created animals; Epimetheus gave a positive trait to every animal, as was his responsibility, but because he lacked foresight, when it came time to give man a positive trait, there wasn't anything left." She furrowed brow at the screen. "It also says that Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to man, which he apparently created, and as punishment, was tied to the top of a mountain and visited by an eagle, who ate his liver everyday." She shuddered. "Ew."

Pete then spoke up. "But if he was a titan, shouldn't he have been immortal?"

Clark nodded. "His liver grew back everyday, and the eagle came back everyday as well. It says he was in constant pain."

Pete grimaced. "Hell of a way to go." He shrugged. "Or, you know, not go..."

Chloe ignored him and skimmed over the rest of the article quickly. "Apparently liver-eating wasn't enough for Zeus, and he punished Epimetheus by sending him Pandora. Prometheus, being gifted with foresight, had warned Epimetheus not to accept any gift from the gods." She looked up at them. "Because he accepted, and because Herod had created Pandora and given her the gift of curiosity, she opened the 'box' we all know from common folklore." She raised her eyebrows and her green eyes glimmered. "The box, which more correctly termed as a jar, held all the evil and misfortunes known to mankind."

"Well, curiosity did kill the cat."

Clark was still reading. "It says that Pandora closed the jar before hope could be destroyed, which is why mankind always holds hope in times of disaster." He looked up at Chloe. "So what does this have to do with LuthorCorp?"

Chloe leaned against the desk, staring into the corner. "I'm not sure. I just stumbled across the name of the project—Epimetheus. I'm assuming Lex has a thing for mythology, because he's named most of his projects after it—Ares, Veritas."

"What are those about?"

"Well," Chloe said, comandeering Clark's keyboard and typing in the searchbox, "Ares is the Greek god of warfare. Or bloodlust, slaughter personified. Not a nice guy. I couldn't find any solid information about Lex's project, but I'd say it wasn't exactly well-intentioned."

"And Veritas?" Pete asked.

Chloe frowned. "That one's more difficult. I found even less information about it than the others. "The only thing I found out was that Veritas, in Roman mythology, was the goddess of truth."

"Well, it doesn't sound evil."

Chloe turned to look at Pete. "Well, think about it this way. What would happen if you were forced to tell every truth you've ever known, spilled every secret that you've tried to keep? If you betrayed all your friends, your parents, yourself?"

"Oh," Pete said simply.

They both looked down at Clark, who was watching the screen carefully. Feeling their eyes, he looked up. "What? You already know my feelings on the subject."

There was a silent agreement between them all: Veritas could _not_ be harmless, whatever it was.

Chloe broke the silence. "But I don't have any solid evidence on any of them yet, so all this searching is helpful, but we don't know what to trust."

The door banged open then, and a frazzled Alicia slipped through the door before it slammed shut again. Chloe straightened up, hands on hip, her expression interrogative from the start. Clark, sensing the barrage of questions Chloe guaranteed, stepped between them, looking at Alicia, his eyes betraying his worry and disappointment. Clark didn't have to say anything.

She tried to act cool.

"Hey, guys," she said casually. She leaned against the door lighty. "Need some air, y'know?"

Clark and Chloe continued to stare at her. Pete, oblivious, remained in the background.

"That little snitch told you everything."

Clark frowned at her. "_Lana_ only told us what you should have in the first place." He took a step closer lowered his voice, but kept his arms crossed. "Friends are there for you, Lish. They're supposed to be. You need to let them help you."

She'd grimaced at her old nickname. "Don't call me that."

Clark shrugged. "Fine. But if you need help, we're here." He turned around to look at Chloe, who nodded resolutely, and Pete, who didn't move but was agreeable to whatever it was Clark was implying.

Alicia grimaced again and pinched the bridge of her nose. _One session of rehab and when you get back to it, it stings like a mother._

And the mood swings were ten times worse.

Clark had reached out for her when she'd shown the small sign of pain. He was closer now, his hand on her elbow. "Alicia? Are you alright?"

"Clark, I appreciate the whole 'good boy' charade and everything, I really do. But I need you," she said, putting one hand on his chest, and placing the other a little lower on his stomach, "to back off."

She shoved him backwards, and he willingly moved back a foot. With a disgusted look around the Torch, she went back into the hallway, allowing the door to slam behind her. Pete let out a long sigh.

"What's up with her?" He looked between Clark and Chloe, who both stared at each other, worried.

If they were both right, if they'd both read the signs correctly, then there was only one thing to assume:

Alicia had a lot more than just an alcohol problem.


End file.
